Faith And The Devil
by Lapsed Pacifist
Summary: This is an extremely girly self-insert, very likely a Mary-Sue type of story, where a lot of the characters aren't at all straight. I thought I'd let you know straight up so you can just pass it by it if that's likely to upset and/or offend you. Otherwise - welcome to the Malfoy family.
1. A Disappointing Breakfast

Okay. You clicked. You're here. Let's get the show on the road, then.

* * *

It was eleven AM on a Saturday and I was sitting at the desk, spreading a disappointing Vegemite substitute across an equally disappointing piece of gluten free toast. The only thing that wasn't innately disappointing was that I'd made a very good cup of tea. It was still steaming in my giant, garish mug and I was counting on it to make this breakfast worth getting up for.

That was when everything began to tremble, a fine juddering shudder that got bigger and bigger. My knife fell from the table.

I snatched up my mug and, clutching it, looked wildly around.

What was it you were supposed to do in an earthquake? Was it to get clear of things? Or hide under something? Under, I thought, in case something fell on you, and dived underneath the desk.

The shaking just got worse. I saw my disappointing breakfast fling itself past my ear and dive, Vegemite substitute-side down, for the floor. The plate followed, and ceramic shattered.

Something else broke. A bottle of gin committed a suicidal leap from the top of my refrigerator. I trembled.

Everything went white.

I woke up. From the dull ache all over my body and the pounding in my head, that was definitely my first mistake.

"...thhhquake?" I muttered, squinting at -

Nothing, actually. Everything was a blur. Where the hell were my glasses?

"Oh, good, she's waking up," said a voice. Some kind of English accent. Received pronunciation, or as close to it as I could tell. Huh.

I rolled - and almost fell off - a couch? A chaise? But somebody caught me by the shoulder, and I blinked up at him.

I had a fuzzy impression of a pale face and blond hair, dark shadows where eyes would probably be when I found my glasses. I blinked at the room, but all I could really see where blurry shapes and colours - cream and green, mostly, with light gleaming from metal here and there.

I sat up, feeling very queer indeed: my skin felt like it was burning up, and everything felt slightly wrong, a little too big or too small or - nothing was quite right.

Was I injured? I -

"Her eyes aren't focusing," said that same voice, sounding suddenly very alarmed. "What's wrong with her?"

"Calm down," murmured another voice, which sounded a lot less strained. "She's confused. She's probably had quite a rough journey."

Whoever these people were, they'd probably saved me from an earthquake. "Sorry," I said, laying a hand over my eyes. "Did you see where my glasses went?"

"Where your-" a pause.

" _Muto lux_ ," said that second voice, and things... cleared. Not perfectly, rather like I was wearing somebody else's glasses - somebody close to my own prescription.

I blinked. Again.

"What was that?" I asked, bringing my hands to my -

Holy shit, my hands were the wrong size.

 _I_ was the wrong size.

My heart rate sped wildly. It didn't feel like a dream. I didn't feel pain in dreams, and everything was still aching. I clenched my fingers, let them curl in upon my hands, and these strange small hands obeyed just as they should. I flinched.

I swallowed. Psychotic episode? Drugs?

"Where am I?" I asked, flat and wary, and looked up at the men looming over me.

The blond man was actually startlingly attractive: fit and big through the shoulders with an angular face and straight posture. There were distinct traces of hauteur in his expression, but mostly he just looked worried.

"You're in my home," he informed me.

I frowned. That... did not actually help me at all. "All right. Where's your home in relation to _my_ home?"

He blinked. "My home is-"

"Miss Malfoy," interrupted the other man, a tall and pale person. Weak jaw, very blue eyes and a head of dark curls. "Do excuse me, but -"

"Sorry," I said. Miss _Malfoy_? "What?"

"Yes," he said, frowning. "I did think that would be the case."

Awkwardly, he came closer and dropped down to his knees by the chaise lounge I was sitting on, which... put him at my eye level. Okay, apparently I was short.

"Look, I'm sorry," I said again, "Something's really wrong with me and I need to go home. Or - get to a hospital or something. I'm sorry, I have to go." I got up, slithering from the lounge.

He caught my arm. His grip was strong. I was _tiny_. My heart rate skyrocketed.

"Let go of me," I said, feeling the thread of anxiety in my own voice.

He didn't move. "Miss Malfoy-"

That stupid name again.

" _Let go of me_." My voice rose, strained. I hated sounding frightened when I wanted to sound angry. I pulled. He held. Panic rose.

"Let her go," snapped the blond man. "You're upsetting her."

And he released me. I held my arm to myself and stared at him. His expression was hard to judge: tight jaw, pursed lips. Narrowed eyes. I hunched.

"Please sit back down, child," said the other one, the blond one with the pretty features.

 _Child_ , pfft. I thought he probably wasn't that much older than me - what, ten years? Maximum? - but I complied carefully. I took a slow breath and exhaled it, emphasis on the outwards breath. I hadn't had a bad panic attack in weeks. Now was a stupid time to break that streak. It'd be -

\- but there was something _wrong_ with me. I had no idea where I was. These strange men were bigger than me and they were keeping me from getting to help. I was going-

Breathe.

Breathe out.

Okay.

I was breathing. Breathing was good. My skin prickled, hot or cold, I couldn't tell. My stomach rolled violently. My chest hurt and my hands shook. I couldn't...

I took another deep breath, out, out, out, I could do this, I wasn't dying. I could figure something out, we'd deal with it, it would be -

 _How could it possibly be okay_. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Breathing. Breathing, come on. I thought of sensation, feelings of the moment: the couch I was sitting on, the drape of my enormous tee shirt over my neck and shoulders, my hair curled over my ears, my nails digging into my hands. I was barefoot, my feet were cold. I was breathing.

Breathing was good.

I swallowed.

Then I realised they'd been talking. "Sorry," I said. "Could you repeat all that?"

The man who'd grabbed my arm made a clicking sound with his tongue. "I understand this is confusing for you, but do try to listen," he said, and I wondered if I'd get hurt if I punched his condescending face. "When you were born, the war was at its height-"

 _What war_? I wondered.

"-and you were moved through realities to somewhere safer. Somewhere where magic does not exist. Your parents have only just been able to summon you back."

I blinked.

That was... not what I'd been expecting to hear. "What?" I said stupidly.

"You mean 'excuse me', not 'what'," corrected the blond man, as though he couldn't quite help himself. "What _is_ that infernal accent?"

"I'm sorry, where are we? Is this some kind of..." I paused. "Anyway, none of that would explain why I'm so small."

They both blinked at me.

"Small?" repeated the blond man. "Are... people bigger, in the reality to which you were moved?" his brow furrowed. He gave the other one an unhappy look. "Do you know _anything_ about the place you moved her to?"

He shrugged. "I switched her for an infant in a hospital there. Private hospital, of course. There is no magic there, and thus: no war. I did take pains to make sure her family was well off. Two parents, well paid, a sister, that sort of thing."

"Muggles, Marlow. You left her with muggles," muttered the other one, looking very, very discontent.

"There's no other kind, there."

 _Muggles_? I thought. Then, bewildered: _is this some Harry Potter themed practical joke? Because it's not very bloody practical._

"We're in Wiltshire, child."

"In South England?" I said numbly.

"South West," he corrected with a sniff.

"I'm from Melbourne." I looked up at him. "Um, is this all some sort of... joke?"

"Melbourne - Derbyshire?"

" _Australia._ "

A pause.

"Oh."

The other man - Marlow, he'd been called, took a deep breath. Then he held out one hand and made a glowing ball of light out of _nothing_. "This is not a joke, Miss Malfoy."

Wait.

That's... what they'd been calling me. I licked my lips. That was. I paused. "My name's not Malfoy," I said slowly and carefully, but I still reached out with my too-small hand and put my fingers in the light. It was strangely warm. Not burning, but... warm. Cozy. I withdrew my fingers and rubbed them together.

"Yes," said the other man. "It is."

"...what."

Marlow cleared his throat. "As I said, Miss -" he paused. "Your first name, if you would."

I told him, and he paused.

He tried to repeat it but the sounds came out ugly and elongated in his accent. The awkward way he pronounced it made me think of a Goondiwindi farmhand. He'd probably be offended by that, but then, so would the farmhand. "Yes, more or less," I said.

Marlow looked briefly bemused. "How terribly ...continental." Then: "As I explained previously: you are originally from this reality. We moved you to keep you safe. Interdimensional magic is... something of a speciality," he said, preening a little.

I eyed him. I was sure that sounded much more impressive to somebody who had the faintest clue as to what it meant.

I glanced back at the ball of light resting in his hand.

"...Are you sure you have the right person?"

He frowned. "Quite sure, Miss - Miss _Malfoy_." And now we were back to that name. Riiiight. "I placed the mark on you myself twelve years ago," he added, and gestured at my foot.

I blinked at it.

There was a glowing... symbol, or sigil, or something on it. I couldn't feel it at all, but it sure was lighting up my skin. I blinked again, slowly.

"So... you took a baby, put a glowing tattoo on its foot and sent it to another world for-" I paused. "Sorry, did you say twelve years?"

"Give or take a few months, yes," said Marlow, looking very satisfied. He didn't seem to think there was anything unusual or weird about what I'd just repeated to him.

"I'm twenty six," I pointed out.

The blond twitched. "Excuse me?"

"Ah," said Marlow. "Well, er, yes. That can happen." He cleared his throat. "Not to worry, though. Sometimes these time lines don't quite match up. See, here, it's nineteen ninety-one, and -"

"I was _two_ in nineteen ninety-one," I pointed out.

"Look, Miss Malfoy. Listen: I don't have time to explain interdimensional travel to you right now. It's complicated. But time and aging is quite different between time lines. There, perhaps you were twenty six; here, you are twelve."

"Okay," I said finally. "That's great. How do I get back?"

Alarmed looks crossed both of their faces. " _Go back_?" blurted the blond man. "With the _muggles_?"

I looked sideways at him and then, of course, it hit me. Of course I knew who this was. Lucius bloody Malfoy. I stared.

...He was prettier in real life. Or - just more charismatic, perhaps. Something less about his look and more in his manners and expression. And, apparently, he was also my _father_. Weird.

I rubbed my hands through my hair. "Well, _yeah._ If I stay here, how is my housemate going to make rent?"

There was also a book I was part of the way through, a short story I was writing, a load of laundry that had been in the machine and half a lamb leg I was meant to roast for the next few meals sitting in my fridge... I'm not saying my life was exceptionally exciting, but I did have things to do.

"Your... housemate," repeated Lucius. Then, " _Rent_. My daughter _rents,_ " he muttered, as though he couldn't quite believe such a thing. Then, "My daughter _rents from muggles_."

" _I'm_ a muggle," I pointed out to him, which was in hindsight probably not the right thing to say.

He shot me the single most scandalised look I had ever seen in my life. His face went absolutely white, but a livid flush rose across his cheek bones. "You most certainly _are not_! I -" He took a deep breath, turned away, and took another deep breath.

"Mr Malfoy," said Marlow, looking torn between bemused and concerned. "Are you quite -"

"A moment, please." Malfoy held up one hand for silence, which he got.

Marlow turned back to me. "I do sincerely doubt it, Miss Malfoy, but here, let me-" and he passed me a long wooden stick - a _wand_ , I thought, twisting up inside with fright and distress and excitement. "The most a muggle or a squib could produce from _that_ is a few sparks of residual magic. Give it a wave."

I frowned. "I..."

I didn't want to. What if I _was_ magic?

What if I _wasn't_?

The uncertainty was frightening but I didn't want it to end. There was a part of me that definitely wanted to have magic - which, well, _yeah_. Of course there was.

But there was also a very large part of me that did not want to be a twelve year old in a strange universe where everything was wrong and my father was some kind of _terrorist._

"Um," I said.

"Go on," said Malfoy, softly, and he'd turned back around now, curiosity overwhelming whatever else he might have felt.

I chewed my bottom lip.

Awkwardly, I waved the wand.

The chandelier caught fire with a soft _whump_ and exploded in a rain of crystal and sparks.

I yelped and dropped the wand, covering my face with my hands. There was a brief silence once the noise had stopped and I -

"Oh my god," I said, standing, staring, "oh my god I'm so sorry. Oh, _shit_." There were shards all over the floor, smoke was in the air, the bitter taste of something flammable on my tongue. Melted wax - they used _candles_ , of course they did - and

Lucius clapped delightedly, looking up at he smoking jagged edges of what had been a very lovely chandelier. His face lit up when he was pleased, something sweet shining through all of the arrogant hauteur. He beamed at me. "Very good! Plenty of power. Lovely work, just lovely."

"I broke your light!"

"With _magic."_

I stared at him. "I..." I looked at the fixture again. "I... have magic?" I looked at Marlow, who was finally rising from his knees next to the chaise lounge.

His lips were curved, just a little. "Muggle, indeed," he said quietly.

He hesitated with some stiffness from kneeling for so long, and I automatically reached out a hand to help him up. He didn't take it, and it took me a moment to remember that I wasn't really big enough to counterbalance the weight of a grown man. I swallowed. Right. Tiny.

"I think perhaps it would be wise," said Malfoy in a very reasonable voice, which made me immediately wary, "if you would come and meet your mother and brother, and we can discuss the matter of you remaining here over morning t-" He stopped, looking at me like he'd only just noticed what I was wearing.

"What is... Does your - clothing - have _profanity_ upon it?"

I looked down at the enormous tee shirt I used as pyjamas. 'LET'S NAP MOTHERFUCKER' was written across it, accompanied by a picture of a sleeping kitten.

It had been big on me before and now it was, happily, big enough to function as an ugly dress - for which I was very thankful - but that certainly didn't change the part where it had MOTHERFUCKER on it.

"Um," I said.

"Don't mumble," he responded automatically. Absently, with one hand, he waved his wand vaguely at the room and the shards of the chandelier took themselves off to a corner somewhere.

"It was for sleeping in," I explained. "It's not, er, day wear. Nobody was really supposed to see it. I... thought it was cute?"

"You summoned my daughter in her underpants," he said incredulously, turning on Marlow, who looked suddenly embarrassed.

"Well. Er. That is," said Marlow.

 _Any time you want to finish one of those statements, mate_ , I thought drily. I delicately refrained from telling Malfoy that he was lucky I'd actually gotten up and put _on_ underwear. I slept in the shirt. The bra and underpants were optional.

Yeah.

 _That_ might have been awkward.

I glanced around and found that, weirdly, my mug had come with me and was propped against the back of the chaise lounge. It wasn't full of tea anymore, but it was there and unharmed: a huge, garish ceramic thing with a painted owl face upon it. It had yellow, pink, white and blue eyes, a bright orange beak, pale green wings - its eyes were slightly off-centre, giving it a shifty and suspicious look. It was hideous. I loved it.

I picked it up and clutched it to me. _You and me, owl mug,_ I thought, peering at its suspect little eyes. _You and me._

I did agree in the end to visit with the family to discuss my circumstances - not that I'd had much choice - and while Malfoy looked like he was going to dismiss Marlow from the house completely, he glanced at me and seemed to think better of it - which was fair, because there was no faster way to ensure I'd try to leave than to imply I couldn't.

"You are, of course," he said instead, in a voice that was positively gelid, "welcome to join us for morning tea."

Marlow seemed to understand that he was absolutely and in no way actually welcome, because he gave a weak smile and responded, "I thank you, but if you don't mind I'd prefer to have a look through your library here."

And that was that.

A house elf was summoned to provide me with clothing - and, I got the impression, to keep an eye on Marlow while he was loitering in the Malfoy library, a sentiment that Lucius disguised with the phrase, "to help you find anything that might interest you."

House elves were precisely as ugly as I'd thought they'd be. This one had a long, pointed nose and ears almost as big as - its? her? - head. Her skin had a grey-green cast to it, her eyes a yellowish sheen, and her long fingers seemed to have an extra joint compared to mine, and her pillowcase had a stain down one side that looked rather a lot like tea.

I watched her curiously, but also hopefully without giving any expression away. It was... very strange.

"I'll return shortly," said Lucius, with significantly less frost in his voice, "it wouldn't be right to leave Marlow to wander on his own. You might take the time to change," he added, fairly pointedly.

I took that to mean that I should be wearing pretty much anything else when he returned. Well, I didn't especially want to meet Narcissa Malfoy - my stomach gave a nervous, excited flutter at the thought - in nothing but a tee shirt with an obscene slogan on it, either.

There was... a lot of green.

Don't get me wrong: I liked green. I just looked awful in it. My skin colour came from somewhere in the south of Europe, and the colour varied from "olive" to "yellow-grey" depending on my health and what I was wearing. Greens and yellows were... bad.

I sighed and pulled on something from the pile anyway.

When Malfoy returned I was tying a broad strip of fabric that I assumed was some kind of belt around my waist.

I looked at my skin tone, then looked at his. To my knowledge, Narcissa was awfully pale, too. "You're _sure_ it's me you want," I said carefully, glancing back down and fiddling with the ties. It looked totally wrong with a weird lopsided bow in the middle, so I turned it to one side. Who knew how fashion here even worked?

Well. It covered my butt. Good start.

"We completed those spells while you were sleeping it off," he said blithely, as though that wasn't a giant violation of my privacy or something. "Sometimes these things happen," he shrugged one shoulder.

 _Okay_ , I thought, _but you're both blond. My hair is, like, black_. I'd be asking questions about Narcissa's extramarital activities, if I was him - but if he had, it sounded like he'd already resolved it with a spell. Which had said I was his, apparently.

I scratched my neck.

He looked me up and down, sighed, and leaned forward to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. It was quick, but it was also... familiar. Intimate. I froze.

He drew back. I swallowed. "Um," I said.

"Please don't mumble."

"Sorry."

"I wanted to ask," he said carefully after a moment's pause. "You've told me that you're twenty six." At this, he gave me a dubious look, but I nodded and he went on. "I'd request that you not mention this to Narcissa. That is, your mother."

I raised my eyebrows. "You want me to pretend to be twelve?"

"Giving up her first child was... difficult for Narcissa," he said slowly, and I tried to keep my expression blank. _Difficult for Narcissa, but not for you?_ I thought, quite uncharitably. I wondered if that was a product of mandatory masculinity, or if he really didn't believe that giving up his own child had hurt him.

If it hadn't, I wasn't sure I wanted to know him as a father.

"Difficult," I repeated, prompting him to continue.

His gaze was distant for a second longer. "She has already... Even twelve years was a lot to miss. I don't wish to make this any harder upon her." He dropped his eyes.

I licked my teeth thoughtfully. Then I shrugged. "Sure." I already looked twelve, and I really didn't think I wanted to stay here anyway. Pretending to be twelve wouldn't kill me.

"You're certain? It might be... limiting," he suggested delicately.

"I already look twelve," I pointed out. "And it probably won't be as limiting as you'd think. People see what they want to a lot of the time."

The corner of his mouth curled. "How very true," he murmured.

Then he straightened. "Very well, Narcissa has already called for tea. I'm sure she and Draco are waiting quite impatiently."

I nodded, although inside I felt nervous. Whether or not I intended to stay in this strange fictional reality didn't really seem to impact whether or not I wanted Narcissa and Draco to like me.

And I was so very bad at being liked.

As I followed Lucius through the room, down a hall way and toward our destination, I wondered if they'd be anything like what they seemed to be in the books? Draco, I was sure was a spoilt brat. But even Lucius had already proven to be a little more... multifaceted, than I'd seen in the novels.

I... well, I wondered.

The portraits on the walls were talking, hushed voices and gleaming eyes. They were painted upon canvas and the rough, treated weave of it was obvious, but it didn't seem to make much difference to the people in the images. I had about a million questions about that, but I held them in.

"You've graduated, then?" Lucius asked quietly as we walked. "I assume the -" he paused, and then continued, sounding like he'd swallowed something foul, "- the muggles, they do undertake some sort of ...standardised education?"

"They do," I said slowly. I wondered if that had cost him a lot to say. "Ten years of standard education at a minimum, in Australia. With muggles, anyway," I added, with a creeping sense of how surreal this all was.

The idea occurred to me, fleetingly, that I was probably in a coma somewhere having a very realistic Harry Potter themed dream. It felt real, though, and it was easier to concentrate on what felt real than on the probability that I was sleeping off an earthquake or dying somewhere else.

At any rate, I wasn't sure if he'd meant school or university, but both were true so I nodded. Did they even have universities here? "I've graduated. I finished my university degree a year ago. I took literature and criminology, which were probably poor choices for employment."

He looked sideways at me. "Criminology," he repeated uncertainly. "I'm not sure I know what that means."

"It's a reasonably young field of study. It's the study of crime, essentially." I chewed my bottom lip. "Um, so, instead of a political or justice-driven view point, we study crime and criminality from a social perspective. So... questions like 'why do we call certain things crimes?' and 'why would a person commit a crime?' and 'can the state commit a crime against a citizen?' and, well, that sort of thing. A lot of research goes into ways to prevent crime and violence through education and social services and -" I glanced sideways at Lucius, who was looking slightly bemused. "How to allocate resources to have the best preventative outcome for the criminal justice system, I guess," I said after an awkward second.

There was no real way to cleanly but accurately define this, so... I sort of trailed off.

Lucius's bemused expression hadn't changed, but he did look slightly curious. "What on earth persuaded you to study something like that?"

"Curiosity. Interest... Some idea that I could be part of something to change society for the better," I added cynically. Time and experience had proven that nobody actually _listened_ to what criminologists had to say. Security was more important than welfare and penal populism was ever on the rise.

Also, like most of the criminology graduates I'd ever met, I worked in a totally unrelated field doing menial tasks nobody else wanted to do.

"Yes," Lucius said distantly, "I'm familiar with that idea."

I bit my lower lip. Lucius's ideals were, as far as I could tell, gross bigotry. That he might have felt the same way about them was... discomforting.

"That was before I had to interview my first prisoner," I added, trying to get past that moment. "He'd helped a fourteen year old girl inject drugs and she died. There's a lot to be said for criminological theory, but practice is... difficult."

He looked distinctly uncomfortable. "That is... not a pursuit I'd have chosen for my daughter. What does your husband think of this?"

I stopped walking. "Excuse me?"

"Your - Oh, pardon me. Are you unmarried? I thought, at your age..." he trailed off thoughtfully.

"I'm not married," I said warily. "I don't really intend to get married."

"It seems like that would be terribly unfair to your children." He raised his eyebrows and looked distinctly dubious. But he kept walking and I followed because otherwise I'd get lost in this overdecorated maze of a house.

"I have no intention of having children."

"You have no wish to - continue your blood line? Pass down your family name?"

"You sound like my father," I sighed. _A less pushy version of my father, anyway_. That was sort of ironic, because it seemed to me that the Malfoys had much more reason to be invested in procreation.

"I _am_ your father," he pointed out.

Oh. Right. That.

I took a deep breath.

"I don't know. If I decide to stay here, I might revisit the idea," I wouldn't change my mind, but he didn't need to know that, "but there's not much point where I come from."

He looked faintly annoyed at the reminder that I may just race right back to Marlow and beg him to send me back to the real world, but he held his tongue about it.

"Do you, um, do anything? In terms of work?" I wondered. It had always seemed from the novels that he'd basically just haunted the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts like a restless spirit, waiting to leap in and yell BUT BLOOD PURITY at awkward moments. And also to insult Hagrid's hut. I mean. As far as I could tell.

But he probably did other things, too.

"I'm on the board for a number of organisations," he said, which was... vague. "Some are charitable, others commercial; one is even the school that Draco will attend - and hopefully you, as well."

I nodded slowly. It was a very... it was a rich-person job, I thought a bit cynically. I glanced sideways at Malfoy. He probably owned shares in everything, too. Fingers in pies.

"Here," he said finally, hesitating before a double door, fingers hovering over the handle.

I swallowed and dragged my fingers through my hair. The nerves came rushing back. Narcissa was one of my favourite characters, and it was really... really nerve wracking, to wonder what she might think of me.

"Right."

He didn't touch the handle - instead, he flicked his fingers at it, and it turned and the latch clicked softly and the doors opened.

The room beyond was all in shades of dark wood, cream and silver and rich brown accents. There were huge windows and french doors out to a balcony. Sunlight streamed in, slanting across a table set for tea: gilt-edged cups and the elegant curve of a fine pot. There were a few plates between, filled with miniscule cakes and tiny, buttery sandwiches.

Behind the table was a woman. The books had described Narcissa as being pretty, but expressing herself in such a way as to ruin the appeal.

Obviously there was something wrong with Harry's perspective, because she was just - she was _lovely_. Her features were fine: her brow high and clear, high sharp cheeks with a healthy glow, eyes bright and engaged. Her hair was golden in the mid-morning sun, and there was a smile playing around the edges of her lips.

Her skin was creamy and I had a brief, horribly awkward moment of wondering what it would be like to scrape my teeth along her neck and -

Okay, _no_.

I blinked my eyes and let them slide to the other person at the table - a boy, just on the edge of adolescence, with a pointed face, pale skin, paler hair. Draco looked almost exactly as I'd imagined, which was lucky - at least _one_ of them wasn't unfairly attractive. Although, he was ten or eleven, I supposed, so - well. Time would tell. There was more of his father than his mother in his face, so he probably would not be launching a thousand ships any time soon. He looked as though he'd been kept waiting for too long, kicking his feet and giving sulky looks in our direction.

Narcissa looked at me and exhaled softly. Then she stood and swept toward me, arms outstretched. I thought for a terrifying moment she was going to hug me, but all she did was to sweep up my hands in hers and wrap her fingers around mine.

Her hands were dainty, strong bones, fine cool skin. I could feel the cool metal of a ring. I let her squeeze my fingers and watched her face, but all she showed was a smile - part wistful, part delighted, all strangely intent.

"You've _grown_ ," she said, looking at me with a kind of terrifying desperation. I wasn't sure what that expression wanted from me, but I was fairly certain I wasn't qualified to provide it.

God, she was something to look at, though. She even smelt good: something soft and floral, too light to be synthetic; expensive. I wanted to inhale the scent of her hair.

I smiled uncertainly and tried not to think inappropriate thoughts about my _mother_. No. Come on, _no_. "Er," I said, then, "hello."

"Draco, come here to say hello to your sister," said Narcissa, looking over one shoulder.

He looked wary and not entirely pleased to meet me, which I thought was understandable - more understandable, perhaps, than the reactions I'd received from Narcissa and Lucius.

"It's good to meet you," he said, sounding as though he was not really sure that it was, in fact, good to meet me.

"You, too," I said, with an uncertain smile. "This is really weird," I added to him, as though neither adult was watching us intently.

He nodded, but didn't say anything else - although his eyes were narrowed and his mouth was a hard line. I wasn't sure if he had decided he disliked me personally or if he just didn't like the circumstances.

"Come, sit down, eat something - let me pour you some tea," said Narcissa, drawing me along behind her as she returned to the table.

We sat and settled, and Narcissa did offer me a cup - a lovely one, with a muted blue pattern around the edge, made of bone china so fine that it was translucent in the sun. I inhaled the steam when she poured, and for a moment everything was scented soft and faintly bittersweet, beautiful and homey.

I closed my eyes.

Mm.

When I opened them again, three sets of eyes were watching me with expressions that ranged from amused to slightly annoyed.

"I-" Narcissa stopped. "Do you know," she said in a strained voice. "I don't know your name. We'd decided on one, on Sixta, but-"

I told her, although considering Marlow's reaction it was sort of against my better judgement. But Sixta? Really?

She repeated my name carefully. Her accent was a lot better than his, but it didn't seem to sit well with her anyway. "It means conquest and triumph, doesn't it?" she added. "It's a good name. A little... ethnic, perhaps, but good."

 _Ethnic_ , Christ.

"We might change it, I think," she went on. "Not that it's not a lovely name, of course, but it's - a little bit, well. We could call you Victoria. It would keep the meaning intact but... Well, Victoria's quite a nice name, too, don't you think?"

"I'm not even sure I want to stay here, yet," I said, eyeing her. She was still beautiful, I was just... less attracted to her. Fancy that.

She looked stricken by that comment, though. "Not- not stay? Why ever not?" She raised one hand to her mouth. "I don't understand."

Lucius looked incredibly uncomfortable, although Draco looked more hopeful than distressed.

"I have a life and a family there, too, you know," I pointed out. I sipped my tea, though, and it was really nice. _Really_ nice. Delicate. Steeped perfectly.

I did have a family, although my connection to them was fairly tenuous. I was sure they'd miss me if I left, but... well, nothing out of the usual way. They'd be sad, not devastated.

"She's agreed to discuss it with us before she decides," Lucius interjected.

Draco rolled his eyes, selected a tiny pastry and popped it on his plate, more or less ignoring the discussion.

"Oh," said Narcissa. It seemed to take her a moment to recover from this, and in the meantime she glanced at Draco's movements and said, "Here, please, take something to eat. There's cake, if you like."

"Oh, I can't," I said, prepared to undertake the awkward discussion about Why No Wheat Ever yet again. "I can't have wheat flour. Thank you, though. They do look lovely."

This, if anything, appeared to be quite the wrong thing to say. "You can't have wheat flour?" repeated Narcissa, looking bewildered.

"It's a disorder where - there are proteins in some grain crops that make me sick. It's like an allergic reaction," I tried to explain. I wasn't sure how much of that a witch would understand, but -

"Sprue?" she said, confused. "But that's a childhood deformity. Surely you've had it fixed?"

I blinked.

"I... what?" Sprue _was_ an old-fashioned word for coeliac disease, but I hadn't thought it would even be a thing they'd know of.

"It's a very simple spell," she said. "Any healer can perform it -"

"Wait," I interrupted. "Are you saying that somebody can cast a spell on me - one spell - and _I can eat wheat products_?"

"Well, yes," said Narcissa slowly. "My dear, do they not fix this where you've come from?"

"No - I -" I opened my mouth to tell her there was no magic, but Lucius was looking distinctly uncomfortable. Conscious of distressing Narcissa, I shook my head. "No," I said slowly instead, "they must not have invented that one yet."

I paused.

"So if I stay here, I can have bread?" I asked brightly.

* * *

Please be aware: this story's not got much of a plot, and certainly contains very few power fantasies, unless you consider the power to consume gluten a really serious thing (I do. Your mileage may vary). This character is not here for dominion or to save the world. She just wants to eat bread and maybe live to thirty. Otherwise... I have vague and nebulous plans for the next few bits of this story but from then on it'll be "well whatever," which is 100% accurate to my SI because that's how I plan my own life too. But plans exist. You can drop me a comment below if there was something you particularly liked; if there was something you particularly didn't like, welp, you can always exit the browser window.


	2. Victoria

The decision was made, and I worked very, very hard not to think about it too much. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but... believe me, in the interests of not having a complete hysterical meltdown, it was necessary.

Uncertainties came and went in the back of my mind anyway, filtering their way into a pervasive unease that seemed sourceless, or perhaps a product of illness rather than anxiety: a clenching in my stomach, a strange taste in my mouth, a tightness in my throat.

I looked for a distraction.

While Narcissa had seemed bemused at my quick change of mind, and Lucius was sort of - annoyed? Exasperated? Like he'd been faced with something both unexpected and unexpectedly _stupid_ , and only good manners were keeping him from making dissatisfied _ugh_ noises, basically - Draco seemed... contemptuous.

But that might just have been his face.

It wasn't hard to remember that he was eleven, and thus a little snot-faced bastard like all children of that age, because he looked eleven. He looked like he'd favour his mother as he got older, but honestly that might have had more to do with how puberty hadn't yet hardened his facial features.

"School in the northern hemisphere doesn't begin until September, does it?" I said, hoping to provoke him into conversation - at least if I got him talking I'd know if he had some specific dislike to do with me or if he just resented the idea of a sister in general. "It begins at the end of February in the south. Supposedly so children could go home over the summer months and help with... agricultural work."

His gaze wasn't what you'd call friendly. After a second, he nodded. "September first," he said, quite correctly and with a sort of parentally-approved stiff politeness.

"Are you... looking forward to it, then?" I prompted, hoping he'd give me something to work with. I knew quite a lot about Draco but it wasn't like I could reveal that. If he gave me any opening at all, I might be able to use it, though...

His lips twisted just a little, then he glanced at his mother who was watching like a hawk, and then blinked slowly. "Yes," he drawled, looking at me like I was not very bright.

I felt one of my eyebrows twitch. I was a lot of things - frequently absent-minded, lazy, unfriendly, whatever. But I was not _stupid_.

On the other hand, allowing myself to be riled and annoyed at an eleven year old for being a recalcitrant little shit was hardly going to help anything. I bared my teeth in a way that probably counted as smiling. "Well, who knows," I said with such forced good cheer it must have grated just to hear it, "Maybe I'll get to go, too. Wouldn't that be great?"

"To Hogwarts?" Narcissa murmured with a delicate moue. "Of course you will. You'll be the eldest in your class, but only by a year or so. I don't think it would be prudent to leave off any longer - although that does mean we shall have to make an effort to get you up to speed before then..."

Draco, on the other hand, looked at me again and his expression clearly said he thought I was somehow not getting his disinterest. Then he gave his plate a much more interested glance. Hmm. Scones and clotted cream, yes, I would probably be more interested in scones, too.

...but I wasn't _allowed_ scones. He had less excuse.

Lucius picked up the thread of the discussion, such as it was, without missing a beat; both seemed determined to let Draco wallow in his reluctance. "Am I to understand that your education has thus far included absolutely no magic or magical history, customs or social studies?"

I'm not actually a great liar, unfortunately - the idea of telling intentional falsehoods makes me feel nervous, and that shows up on my face. I always feel like I'll be caught out somehow, too. In this case, I decided that discretion was the better part of prevarication: incomplete truths were, after all, not _lies_.

"Definitely no magic. I think all magic in my world was pretty much fiction?" That was one way to get around it, at least: Harry Potter was definitely fiction. "Lots of old stories and myths and superstitions, but I doubt much of it's accurate. Will I be very behind?"

"Not in terms of the magic itself. Traditionally children aren't given wands until they're ten, which tends to cut down on unfortunate accidents."

I thought, for a second, of his delight when I'd blown up his light fixture, and was forced to wonder what on earth Lucius Malfoy considered 'unfortunate'.

"Hogwarts won't admit a student before they're eleven, excepting very unusual circumstances, so you certainly won't find yourself behind in terms of practical applications. There are some more... social elements, that will need to be addressed. Customs, history, etiquette."

"Don't look so alarmed," Narcissa broke in, lips curling, "You're doing very well, in general. Good breeding certainly shows."

"She used the wrong spoon," Draco said.

I blinked. "I did?" Crap, which one was I meant to have used? Surely the _spoon next to the cup_? No? Okay, all right, no need to panic, I'd figure it out -

"Yes, but she used it well," Narcissa said, heedless of my internal horror and giving Draco the side-eye. "Certainly none of this clattering and banging against the tea cups. Of course," she smiled winsomely, "ladies are gentler by nature."

I didn't exactly _wince_ when she said that, but my expression was probably not entirely opaque, either. I held my tongue. There'd be plenty of time to argue about how gender essentialism was complete bullshit later.

...or, well, maybe there wouldn't be. I wasn't sure precisely _how_ conservative these people actually were. I might have to pick my battles to escape all the racism and violence...

Draco looked annoyed, and he put his own cutlery down with a soft but very deliberate click.

Narcissa sighed.

Unfortunately, while I was sure she'd noticed that tiny, pointed rebellion, I was less sure she'd noticed that he was looking annoyed right at _me_. I eyed him, envisioning the many horrible possibilities of a young boy who disliked me on principle.

I watched him quietly, wondering how this would play out. We'd have to see...

Narcissa, on the other hand, had taken the moment to share a long, expressionless glance with Lucius. "There's a very great deal to organise," she said finally, as though the enormity of acquiring a second child had not previously occurred to her. She nodded to Lucius. "Would you two take care of Mr Marlow, then? I can see about organising the healer, sorting out the morning's correspondence, and..." she looked sideways at Draco. Very little about her actual expression changed, but she grew suddenly more intent, more calculating. "We'll have to see about getting you measured for new robes soon anyway," she declared.

 _That_ caught his attention. He winced. "Mother, really, I-"

"Draco," said Lucius, and Draco obediently shut his mouth. That was quite a trick. I wondered if I could learn it.

Marlow was courteously but swiftly shown the door. Narcissa had drawn Draco aside to help her with whatever correspondence she was attending to, perhaps already sensing his discomfort with the new addition to their family. This meant that Lucius was, as she's suggested, the one showing their guest to the door. I went too, both out of reluctance to crash Draco's alone time with his mother and because I wanted to see more of the place.

The Malfoy house was enormous and... beautiful. I'm not sure why I'd expected any kind of uniformity, but that was not at all what I got. There seemed to be parts that had been built at all sorts of different times. I thought back to an essay I'd written on the topic of Gothic architecture and wondered how old it all was. There were parts where the walls were bare stone, where the roof was lower, and through windows I had certainly seen outbuildings with stout diagonal buttresses, but I wasn't sure what that meant about the age of the walls...

I peered thoughtfully at a window as we passed - not through it, oh no, _at it._ There was a shallow recess before the glass, and the walls of that were intensely detailed, the edges gilt with what I sure hoped was not actual gold. The huge, dramatic arch of the space let light spill through upon the floors, which were broad and marble and relentlessly noisy. These rooms and corridors, at least, with their huge ceilings and theatrical artistry were definitely newer - maybe, like, baroque or rococo or whatever they called it? I thought maybe sometime before the French revolution? But that was only in the late eighteenth century, surely most of the manor was older than that?

My knowledge of the Harry Potter universe led me to believe that the Malfoys had settled here in Wiltshire in the eleventh century. That was a big gap...

"There will be time to look later," Lucius said neutrally and from right behind me.

I jumped.

I'd gotten completely distracted. My parents had complained about that before -I mean, my rea- my muggle ones. It drove my... paternal non-parent... mad when I'd disappear while walking down the street, usually while he was trying to talk, and he'd find me distracted by a flower shop, a paper store, estate jewellery in a window...

"Oh. Shit, sorry. I-"

Both wizards cringed at my language.

I coughed. Right. Demure. I could do demure! ...Oh god, I was so fucked.

"Sorry," I said again, more carefully. "Um, I'm not really used to..." Company that cared whether or not I swore? Even at work nobody... flinched like that. Oh... dear.

"Apparently." Lucius raised one eyebrow, but there was a surprisingly pleased curve to his mouth when he continued: "My dear, I understand that the Manor is interesting, but there will be time later. We mustn't keep Mr Marlow waiting for long."

I blinked. _My dear._ Hmm. As endearments went, it wasn't... that bad. Preferable to 'my child,' less unsettling than 'love'. Still very... intimate. Discomforting. I shifted uncomfortably, but nodded. "Sorry."

We did continue on, and I made sure to keep my feet moving in the right direction even as I was peering around at things - some very Italian renaissance-looking paintings featuring a classical Roman goddess (which one? I couldn't tell. Sandals, long hair - dogs?) and a cloud of overeager putti. Now that I was less nervous - or, rather, nervous in a different way; less anxious panic and more genuine _nervousness_ \- I was easily distracted by my surrounds, and there was a point where Lucius took my elbow to make sure I didn't walk into a clock - a bronze clock featuring a decorative coiled snake that was really very realistic. I thought it was mounted on marble but to be honest I'd never seen marble in quite that shade before - almost the colour of honeycomb...

Lucius fell into step more or less next to me, which meant changing his stride to match my legs, but he seemed to view this as a necessary evil in preventing me from accidentally colliding with something and/or wandering off.

By the time we finally got Marlow to the door, his precaution had proven to be actually kind of wise. The Malfoy house was amazing in that it was sort of like a gallery or a museum and I wanted to see everything.

Marlow, on the other hand, looked honestly a little relieved to be on his way. As far as I could tell he wasn't so much 'going home' as 'heading off to another dimension', which seemed... er, sort of daunting.

"Do you - er, come _here_ often, then? To this universe?" I wondered, frowning at him. For all that he was a little scary, he'd been reasonably friendly. And... I was curious. How many dimensional travellers have you met? Yeah, exactly.

"Oh," he said thoughtfully. "Certain dimensional travel spells can only really be cast at certain times - some astrological events are necessary before you can really get through. Otherwise, the sky sort of..."

I frowned, because something had triggered a memory... "'When the stars were right, they could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, they could not live'?"

He looked surprised. "I suppose that's one way to put it, although it's more poetic than technically accurate. Now," he added, smiling. His eyes were very blue. "I'm afraid I won't be back for - oh, another thirty years at least. There's a bit of a war in - well, elsewhere, at any rate. We'll be busy. But who knows, perhaps I'll look you up. Your situation is... unique."

I swallowed. Thirty years. Christ. I wasn't even thirty years _old_. A lifetime. I licked my lips. Was I sure? Was I _really_ sure?

 _A lifetime with the Malfoys._

He reached forward like he would clap me on the shoulder but with a glance at Lucius (and Lucius's eyebrow, raised a terrible fraction of a centimetre) he thought better of it. He lowered his voice - low enough that not even the portraits could hear, let alone my politely overbearing guardian. "Don't look so worried, child. These are hard people, ruthless people, true - but they take care of their own. Don't be scared of them."

That was easy for him to say. He didn't have intimate, detailed knowledge of what would happen sooner or later. In as little as one year, my - my _father_ , for goodness' sakes - was going to set a ravening monster upon a school full of children as part of a political ploy.

But, well: _bread_.

( _I_ could have scones and clotted cream! Oh my god. _Oh my god_.)

I nodded, resolute. Yes. This was the right decision. This was perhaps the only decision.

"Good luck," he whispered.

We said goodbye.

* * *

The Malfoy family, I found out, didn't attend the waiting room of a hospital like commoners - they had a healer in private practice who attended them via Floo when they were ill, and she came to visit just as soon as I'd agreed to stay.

"Oh, goodness," she said, peering at me through a set of gold-rimmed spectacles. She looked about mid-fifties, which probably put her at around seventy in Wizarding years, and her face was broad and pale with a livid flush of broken capillaries across her nose and cheeks. "You know, Narcissa, when you said you'd had her sent away to keep her out of the conflict, I thought I'd never see her again. Little Sixta! How you've grown."

"We're calling her Victoria now," said Narcissa. She seemed significantly less engaged in this gossipping than the healer was. Her mouth was curved into a smile but it was enigmatic and amused; she could have been smiling with somebody... or about them. The healer did not seem to notice.

'Victoria' wrinkled her nose slightly. Me being 'twelve' did mean that one of the parents was supposed to be present while the healer saw me, but I didn't especially enjoy being the topic of their conversation. I also didn't really love that name, but provided nobody ever, ever tried to call me 'Vicky' I supposed I could handle it.

"Oh! Well. Well, well. Doesn't have that Roman history, but - well. A good, solid English name, that," said the healer, who was herself named Elizabeth and seemed rather biased.

"I'm so glad you approve," drawled Narcissa with that same smile. I was fairly certain that was sarcastic, and there was a tiny hesitation on Elizabeth's face that made me think she wasn't sure.

"Unfortunately," Narcissa said, having deftly reclaimed control over the conversation during that pause, "the child hasn't had contact with proper physicians in a very long time. She has some childhood illnesses that should have been addressed."

"Oh, oh, yes," said the healer, whipping out her wand. She pointed it at me and I felt the sudden surge of panic like she'd drawn a knife.

"Shh," said Narcissa, dropping one hand on my head. On my _head_. If anything, I tensed up more at her sudden touch. The heat of her hand felt smothering on my skull. "It's unsettling, but not dangerous. Come now. Afterwards we'll get you to the tailor and you'll have something that's not quite that shade of green. I'm afraid it does you no favours at all..."

I nodded stiffly. I didn't love clothes shopping, but I did want to see more of the Wizarding world. "I'd like to look around the house at some point," I suggested quietly while the healer was waving her wand and muttering charms to herself.

"Well," said Narcissa, bemused but pleased, "it's your house. You're family; you may go where you wish... Excepting of course some places that will be locked for your safety, " she added cautiously.

Oh, goodness. What a thought - both the heady idea of being able to look at everything in this enormous museum of a house and the much scarier thought of what might lay behind those locked doors...

I nodded, but I sincerely doubted I'd feel at home in this place for a long, long time.

The healer shot another charm toward me and this time my stomach felt, briefly, as though it was on fire. I yelped and flinched.

"Sorry, dear," said Elizabeth cheerfully. "Not the most comfortable charm, but that will take care of the sprue. You needn't worry about food allergies, at least! Potions ingredients may be another matter," she added.

"Oh," I said, rubbing my belly uncomfortably. "Thank you," I said, a little grudgingly. It hurt! But still.

Bread. Pasta. _Pastry that I didn't have to make by hand out of crushed nuts and butter_. Oh my god, it was going to be amazing. I forced a smile. "Thanks," I said again.

"There is," she added, her face going suddenly grave, "the matter of some other problems."

"Er," I said.

Narcissa's brow furrowed for just a moment.

"Were you aware, dear, that you suffer permanent barrenness of the womb?"

"Oh," I said. "Yes, actually. I was."

The healer looked relieved, probably because this meant that she wouldn't have to go through with explaining it all to me.

There was a small, thin, horrified noise from my 'mother'. I blinked and looked sideways at her. Narcissa's face had already been pale, but now it was white. She looked... shocked. Distressed. I felt the urge to reach out and take her arm, just to make her feel more - supported? Comforted? I wasn't sure.

I mean, let me be clear, it wasn't a real shock to me, but it seemed to be a shock to Narcissa, who looked like she was quite suddenly on the verge of tears.

"Barren?" she repeated, trembling. "Oh, by Lucina - after all that trouble I had conceiving you and Draco, I -" Her mouth quivered.

"Um," I said. I really wasn't sure what to tell her. That I had no thought of having children in the slightest? That I'd cheerfully lied to Lucius when I told him I'd consider revisiting my opinion? Well...

"Sorry?" I hedged. Then, more firmly. "Sorry."

In a terrifying moment she swooped upon me, burying my face in her hair with a low cry. "It's not your fault, my dear. It's _never_ your fault. I'm just - oh, Lucius will be so disappointed. I..." she sighed, heartfelt and shaking, and I patted her shoulder awkwardly. There was something dainty about Narcissa, delicate and pointed. She was bony and unluxurious under her clothes, but warm for all that.

"It's... look, it doesn't really bother me that much," I told her carefully. "I mean, having children isn't such a big deal where I'm from, and..." And I _really didn't want children_ , so I'd always pretty much been pleased it was me and not, say, somebody who had a great desire to procreate.

"It doesn't bother you now," she said, biting her lower lip. "We... you must not let anybody know, do you understand? It's not that anybody would blame you - well, no civilised person - but..." she trailed off, looking worried.

I blinked at her, wondering if it was really such a huge drama in the wizarding world. Apparently it was. I supposed purebloods were like that. "Okay," I said slowly. "Are people likely to..." What? Gossip? I frowned.

She took my hands in hers and looked down at me very seriously. "There is a... it's possible that..." she paused, gathering her thoughts. "The point of ensuring blood purity," she said slowly and carefully, "is to produce superior witches and wizards: those of powerful magic, of quality breeding and enduring character. We are nature's nobility, my love, and it is our responsibility to guide others by example. However," she added, "there are some families who believe that a witch is... less important, if she is unable to reproduce."

I blinked. "Oh," I said. That... made sense, in a very fucked up way. I opened my mouth to say 'that's fucked up,' and quickly shut it again. No swearing, right. "That seems... like production for production's own sake," I said instead, picking my words. "If the children you have aren't valuable for their own sake, then what would be the point?"

"Why, the family line, of course," she said immediately, as though I'd asked her if she believed in gravity or what colour the sky was.

I licked my teeth. Right. Family line.

Somewhere behind me, Elizabeth made an uncomfortable noise. Narcissa's face didn't change in the slightest, which suggested to me that she'd been constantly and acutely aware of her standing there.

"Victoria, just..." she paused. "Please just don't tell anybody you're not... sure of. Nobody who isn't sound, all right?"

"Sure," I agreed. "It's not like I go around telling everybody about my medical problems, anyway."

That, actually, was a complete lie; you only had to eat one meal with me to listen to me wail about why you could eat popular baked goods and I couldn't. But, I mean, _other_ than that.

She nodded once, took a deep breath and turned toward Elizabeth again.

"Very well. If you would be so kind as to sign the declaration, we can see about having Victoria's identity confirmed. You'll need a Ministry record to attend school or legally purchase a wand, so we may as well get it out of the way," she added to me. She was all business again now, pale and straight and with few signs of her previous discomfort.

I wondered if that was the default for her: concealed feelings, none of the shine taken off her expression. It did seem as though Elizabeth had been a personal healer for many years, and for the Malfoy family to still use her she must have been good at keeping strictest confidentiality. I wondered whether Narcissa looked upon her as "sound". I supposed she must, considering.

The paperwork was completed by wand and at extraordinarily little inconvenience - two signatures from some kind of charmed quill, a stamp of Elizabeth's license on the documentation, and then copies produced themselves in triplicate and Narcissa took hers and waved her hand at the ink once, lazily, to dry it.

The last copy was sent to the department by way of a huge horned owl with evil yellow eyes and - well, apparently that was it.

Elizabeth the healer left via Floo - and that was, let me tell you, fucking _terrifying._

The fireplaces were all huge, which on reflection makes a great deal of sense: adults do not fit inside a standard modern fireplace. This one was stone with an ornate cast iron grate, removed with a wave of Narcissa's hand and a soft scraping sound.

The Floo powder glittered and Elizabeth gave only a cheery wave before she threw it inside and - honestly it just looked like she'd been consumed by fire: she took one step into enormous fireplace and - _swoosh._ Gone. Nothing but wood and ash.

I know I flinched.

Narcissa glanced sideways at me. "You've never seen a person use the Floo before?" she wondered, eyes narrowing.

I swallowed. "No." My upbringing in Australia had led me to view fires as a terrible danger; we had bush fires every summer and between evacuations and damages there were often a few fatalities. It was... not bad, necessarily, but something one ought to treat with respect.

Treating fire with respect did not include blithely walking into it, in my view.

Narcissa had different ideas. "Come here, child," she commanded, and took my hand. "Here." And she took some of the glimmering powder from a box that seemed specifically designed for it and threw it upon the flames. They roared up, bright and green at the edges, but -

Narcissa put her whole hand in the fire, completely.

I made an aborted noise. _Christ almighty_.

"There, see?" she said, withdrawing her hand, and showed me.

Gently, I touched her palm.

It was no hotter.

"I..."

I looked at the fire. Oh, I understood it intellectually, but I could feel the heat of it on my face and see the light flickering. It seemed impossible.

"Go on," she demanded. Her voice was soft, but it had no room for contradiction.

I swallowed.

"Do I need more powder?" I asked nervously.

"You would, were we travelling, but not for this. Try."

It got hotter as I leaned in. "Are you _sure_?" I hesitated.

"Together, then," she said, and wrapped her long fingers around mine. Without waiting for a response, she tugged gently and thrust both of our hands into the flames and... held them there.

I squeezed my eyes shut and made a sound that was probably like a confused _meep_ , but nothing hurt. If anything, it was sort of... tingly. Yes, all right, I knew intellectually it wasn't supposed to hurt. I just - it was a bloody _fire_ , okay?

I blinked, finally, and shivered.

Narcissa let go of my fingers and pulled her hand out.

Mine stayed there, all on its own, unburned.

Huh.

She smoothed the back of my hair with one hand. "There, see? You're all right you silly thing," she told me.

I had to stop and remember that she did think I was twelve. Her cooing would have been unacceptable as an adult, but... well. Child. God. Okay. Everything was changing and moving very fast and I felt -

My eyes fell upon the document in her other hand.

Oh _god_ , I...

I was now Victoria Malfoy. Officially. The bird would arrive at the Ministry and...

That was...

That was terrifying. I stared at the parchment in Narcissa's hand, and I took a deep unsteady breath.

She smiled gently at me, like what I was thinking was showing clearly on my face. "Well, now, Victoria. This afternoon we had plans to take Draco shopping for his school supplies. I'll sort out your enrolment with Hogwarts, my dear, and you can come along. Certainly a young lady of your age should have a wand and a more suitable wardrobe, school or no school."

"I..."

"You do look dreadfully pale," she said critically, looking more carefully at me. "Are you well?"

I felt exhausted, actually. I shook my head. "I'm all right, just... a lot of changes, I think."

Her expression softened minutely. "Of course, I should have thought. Well, perhaps tea first." Her lips curved: a tiny, enigmatic little smile. Oh, god, but she was _beautiful_ when she looked like that.

"And toast?" she suggested, with a teasing lilt.

I could feel my eyes widen.

 _Toast_.

 _Real toast_.

I cleared my throat. "Yes?" I said in a hopeful squeak.

* * *

 **Notes:**

1\. Why did she not protest changing her name any harder? - I started out with my actual name written in the text of the fic and it turns out it freaks me out a little, for reasons I don't actually really understand. So I changed it. Now she has a name and it's not my name and any protests would have been for form, which is less fun to write when I could just move on. SO ON WE CHARGE.

2\. Didn't they change school years here somewhere? I thought it was 1990? - Yes. I messed up the timeline in the first chapter because I forgot about northern hemisphere schools starting in September. (We start in or at the end of February here.) I've fixed it going over the first chapter.

That's it for now. If there was anything you particularly liked about the chapter, please let me know in a comment. Otherwise, have a nice day. : )


	3. A Very Long Day Indeed

Narcissa, perhaps unsurprisingly, was very interested in learning what my life had been like up until my being whisked away (or back, perhaps) to the wizarding world. She began her gentle - but thorough - interrogation on our way to the parlour, and continued it after she'd ordered tea and toast from a house elf.

She seemed very distressed that I'd been 'raised by muggles', despite my protests that magic was fiction in my world and the distinction was a lot less relevant. "I shall have to discuss the matter with Mr Marlow," she said softly, "he assured us that you'd be properly taken care of."

I was suddenly but acutely aware that Marlow was very lucky he'd already left. She seemed birdlike, dainty and genteel, but I was reminded that this was a woman who'd looked straight at the dark lord and lied to his face for her son.

Yeah, there would be no underestimating Narcissa.

"Well," I said carefully, again, "there's no 'wizarding' or 'muggle' there. They just... are. They do all right," I added at her dissatisfied facial expression. "I mean, we have... I have - had - a little device, small enough to fit in my pocket, and I could use it to access shops, information, to order food brought to the door, to control lights in my house-" okay, so _I_ didn't do those things, not most of them, but _some_ people did. "We could talk face-to-face with people on the other side of the planet no matter where we were," I added.

Narcissa evidently thought I was putting a brave face on things somehow, because she reached out and touched my hand. I tensed automatically and then made an effort to relax. My mother was touching my hand, that wasn't that weird. It wasn't. Calm thoughts. "My poor darling girl," she said with every appearance of sincerity. "I'm so sorry."

I floundered, incapable of responding meaningfully to that. "We really didn't do too badly," I protested weakly.

" _They_ , my dear," she corrected.

"What? - Er, I mean, pardon me?"

" _They_ , not _we_ ," she said, while I jumped at the sudden appearance of a tea pot, two cups and saucers, and a baffling array of cutlery and crockery. "Have some tea," suggested Narcissa.

Magic. Right.

And there were probably so many bits and pieces because the Malfoys were too rich for their own good. _Our_ own good.

That would... take some getting used to.

Still, the tea had been good.

I peered at the table for a second. "Earlier, you said I used the wrong spoon for my tea," I hedged. Now that I looked at the setting, there were several possible spoons and one of them was smaller, out to the right of my place setting. My hand lingered over the slightly larger one, but...

"Oh, yes. The correct cup, but you did use the demitasse spoon; the tea spoon is the next on the right."

I frowned. "But there's no demitasse?" In the moment, felt pretty darn clever for even knowing what the hell a demitasse _was_. Back home, we'd have called it an 'espresso cup' and left it at that.

Narcissa tilted her head. "There would be, were your grandfather to join us. I'm afraid this setting belonged to his late wife, and it rather likes him." She touched the rim of her saucer with one fingertip. "I'm yet to convince it that any of the cutlery is unnecessary, no matter how small or informal a meal."

The _setting_ liked him. The -

Wait.

" _Grandfather_?" I repeated blankly.

"Of course," she said. "Your father and I weren't just made of unicorn horns and stardust, you know," she teased. "We had parents as well."

"Of - of course. I..." Christ, Abraxas Malfoy was still alive. Wasn't he supposed to be dead of dragon pox? Oh, but that wasn't brought up until... He must die sometime in the next five years, then. I licked my lips. "Sorry, it didn't occur to me," I said, trying to look less anxious about that than I felt.

Briefly, I wondered if I should check the HP Wiki for Abraxas Malfoy's actual date of death - and then I remembered that even though the Internet did, presumably, exist, there would be no chance of my accessing it from Malfoy bloody Manor and _certainly_ no HP Wiki. That thought was briefly but intensely disturbing.

What year was it? Ninety one?

RAM was still measured in megabytes. Hell, _hard drives_ were still measured in megabytes.

I swallowed, and then I realised Narcissa had been watching me, and no doubt had noticed every last expression crossing my face. Unlike mine, her face was pale, still and blank.

I offered her tea before I poured my own, and made very certain that there was no clinking or clattering as I used the correct spoon to stir in my milk.

"You must have questions," she said, quite neutrally, while I nervously made sure the handle of my tea cup was parallel to the edge of the table.

I did. I had so _many_ questions, but none were the kinds of questions I was supposed to ask - I wasn't supposed to _know enough_ to ask them. I rubbed my left wrist. "Do I have any other close relatives?"

She smiled, as though this was somehow a clever or pleasing question. I didn't quite get it, but gamely I smiled back. Doubtless mine was a fleeting and uncertain smile, but the effort counted for something.

After a moment, her smile faded. "There was a time when I could have given you lists upon lists of close relatives, but I'm afraid that the war had a-" she paused. Then she looked speculatively toward me. "It isn't something anybody enjoys discussing, but I suppose I can't have you ignorant."

Even having said this, it took Narcissa some time to build up to actually explaining. Her eyes were distant when she finally started speaking again. "Only ten years ago we were in the middle of a civil war. Several of our family were.. involved," she said delicately.

That seemed like a pretty diplomatic way to put it... to say the least. "Oh," I said slowly.

"You have two aunts, I suppose, one with whom I'm not on speaking terms. The other has been imprisoned for war crimes. Otherwise, you'll find that you're distantly related to a great many of the purebloods in our social circles. It's an advantage in some ways," she noted, "but it's also an obligation."

I nodded. I was from a sprawling family myself and I knew well both the advantages and disadvantages of being stuck with a bunch of aunts, uncles and cousins. "I can understand that. Does Lucius - sorry, Father. Does he not have other relatives?"

"A second cousin in Lyons. Sangclaire, neé Malfoy. Otherwise, no. His father's cousin was lost during the war, and the main line of the family has had one heir for several generations - until you and Draco, of course."

I nodded slowly. A grandfather and a second cousin once removed in France. I could deal with that - and on the other side, only Bellatrix and Andromeda, and-

Oh my god, _Tonks_ was my cousin.

And _Sirius_ , technically. Sirius was my cousin once removed. How absolutely fucking bizarre.

"I..." I paused, then sighed softly. "I don't really know enough to know what to ask. You said the tea setting was - fond? Of my grandfather. How does an inanimate object become fond?"

"Ambient magic," Narcissa responded, which surprised me. I had thought that a lot of these explanations would fall under 'dunno, magic?' but it sounded like people had actually done research, at least on some points. "Witches and wizards generate magic, whether or not we are actively using it, and over time it's possible for that magic to imbue objects, particularly objects about which we have strong feelings."

"Does that mean that intense emotions are part of what makes magic work?" I ran my fingertip around the rim of my saucer thoughtfully. If Abraxas's feelings for his wife were spilt over into the things that reminded him of her after her death, that actually made a weird kind of sense.

"Some magic," she said, with a pleased smile. "Some magic requires a strict adherence to rules and structures but other kinds are... intuitive, I suppose. Do you have any hobbies?"

I blinked. That question had seemed to come out of nowhere, but after a moment I realised we were engaged in a quid pro quo interrogation here. Ah. Of course we were. Malfoys, I thought, torn between fondness and resentment.

I contemplated trying to explain the concept of fanfiction to a fictional character for about a third of a second before discarding it. Too difficult. Too _weird_. "I like reading and sketching," I said, hedging my bets on what sorts of hobbies would be acceptable to a person like Narcissa.

She seemed to find those to be proper hobbies, although she did express some dissatisfaction that I was terrible at music, and clicked her tongue, slightly disappointed.

Our conversation went on in this terribly stilted way: a question for a question, carefully constructed answers.

The only real interruption came when a house elf sent my toast up, and I just about passed out from sheer excitement.

"My dear, are you sure you don't want anything _on_ the toast?" Narcissa queried, a bit surprised, but clearly pleased with my delight.

"It tastes like _wheat_ ," I said rapturously, which was basically an answer in and of itself.

"I should certainly hope so." She took a delicate sip from her tea cup.

"Delicious lightly burned wheat. I can't _even_." It was amazing. "I haven't had wheat, in, like, a decade." The craving for grains with gluten - wheat, rye, barley and oats, basically - never went away. It never even really dissipated. There was a part of the supermarket that smelled like bread and bread alone, and there had been days when I'd walked through, inhaled, and just... stopped, frozen in the face of overwhelming temptation.

Gluten free bread _really_ didn't cut it.

But this? It was so beautiful I could almost _cry_.

In that golden moment, I was absolutely sure of my decision to remain in the wizarding world, despite Narcissa's furrowed brows and increasingly bemused expression.

"Oh my god that's _amazing_ ," I informed her, peering at my plate and wondering if she'd let me get away with picking up the crumbs with my fingers. Probably not.

I looked up, finally, to find Narcissa holding her wand loosely, taping it with one fingertip as she eyed me. There was no way to discern her thoughts or feelings from the expression on her face.

I froze. "...Mother?"

Something flinched behind her eyes when I said that, but when she spoke her voice was very calm.

"I'm not entirely certain you should be calling me that, my dear," she said softly. "I'm not quite sure what you are, but I know you certainly aren't a twelve year old girl."

 _Shit._

"The markings are the same, the spells recognise your blood..." she looked at me - but also past me, eyes distant, face closed off. "So it must be what's _inside_."

And then she had her wand trained upon me, casually, so casually. " _Incarcerous_."

"Um," I said, tugging on the thin cords that saw me tied immediately to the chair. "If you could put your wand down, I'd be happy to explain."

"I believe I shall keep my wand as it is, and you will explain anyway," she told me pleasantly.

I was surprised, but I supposed I oughtn't have been, when she pulled a tiny flask from - somewhere. Whatever was inside it was glittering blue with a golden sheen.

"Um," I said, staring at it in consternation.

You know, when I'd first woken and faced my disappointing breakfast, I hadn't thought at all that my day might land me tied up to a chair in one of the Malfoys' parlours, staring down the barrel of an unrecognisable potion.

My heart was racing so fast.

Was she going to poison me? Or-

"It's a simple truth potion, my dear - it cannot force you to speak, but it ensures that whatever you say is true. Surely you don't think I'd poison my own daughter?"

I eyed her, because while I didn't think she'd poison her own daughter it was also pretty clear that she didn't think I necessarily _was_ her daughter. And I absolutely believed in her willingness to poison a stranger.

Of course, the idea that I had any choice but to drink it was an illusion at best: a soft moue of her pretty mouth, a little flick of her wand, and I was forced to swallow down whatever it was in her hand.

It burned cold going down, and left me lightheaded. It tasted faintly of liquorice.

Narcissa banished the bottle and settled regally back into her seat, apparently waiting for something to happen - although whether that was giving me time for the potion to kick in and force me to be truthful, or giving me time to froth at the mouth and go black in the face, I couldn't tell.

I imagined - or I hope I imagined - that I could feel the potion in my belly, bubbling and burning. Everything was heightened with the onset of acute anxiety: my heart was fast, my skin was sweating. I was breathing more heavily than I ought to have been, and my head was beginning to ache something fierce. I wanted nothing more than to run. Or to punch Narcissa. But mostly to run.

I couldn't.

Her ropes held tightly.

"Whenever you're ready, dear," she said finally, sipping her own tea. "I'd like to have an explanation from you."

Wait. It _was_ a truth potion?

I frowned.

I could tell right away that I didn't _have_ to say anything. I could sit here, in silence, for as long as I liked.

She'd probably have to dose me again, and I was betting that a truth potion like that one was much easier to get than, say, Veritaserum - so she could afford to be patient. Me? Eventually I'd need to piss, if nothing else.

I opened my mouth to say _when Marlow brought me here this morning I wasn't certain I'd be able to stay_ , but what actually came out was: "So... When Marlow brought me here this morning I was pretty sure I wasn't going to want to stay."

She said nothing.

"Right. So... Wow, this is embarrassing. For him. Lucius asked me," I paused when I saw her fingers tighten on her wand. What did that mean? I didn't know enough about these people, despite my extensive reading. I didn't know _nearly enough_. "Um, Lucius asked me to... not let on to my actual age. The... realms? Apparently move at different speeds?"

A pause.

"I was told a similar thing some years ago," she allowed.

"Right, and... I agreed because.. I thought I'd only have to pretend for an hour or so."

She narrowed her eyes, but her posture relaxed a little bit. "Because you'd be leaving."

"Well, yeah. I mean, this world's all bullshit, really, isn't it?"

Her eyebrows rose. "And how old are you, Victoria?"

"Twenty-six."

She sighed. "Darling, I don't know why you didn't just say that. You aren't a good enough actor to maintain that pretence for long. Your vocabulary is too large and your syntax is too polished - and just now you admitted that you hadn't eaten wheat in ten years. An awfully good memory, then, for a two year old child."

"Anything else you've been lying about?"

I opened my mouth to say _no, of course not,_ but the potion redirected my tongue with an alarming ease. "Yes," I said automatically, and flinched. "Shit," I added emphatically. I ground my teeth. "Not _big_ things. My hobbies _are_ sketching and reading. Also writing porn and cooking and sleeping and c- _no nope no, not that -"_ I saw her mouth the word 'porn' with some uncertainty, as though she didn't quite believe what she'd heard, "- and I told Lucius I'd reconsider marrying and having kids but I thought I was leaving so I didn't -"

A faintly bemused expression crossed her face, and Narcissa held up her hand.

I jammed my jaw shut painfully. "Mmm-whnnnnfg," I said, through my teeth, glaring.

It took her much less time to administer the antidote to her potion, because I was singularly cooperative.

Then she petted my hair gently. "There, see," she cooed, "we're all better off when we get these little misunderstandings out of the way early on."

And with a flick of her wand, my bindings dissolved.

It had been a remarkably efficient, and _horrifyingly_ effective interrogation - and it had taken her all of ten minutes.

"It wasn't anything personal," she said, making her way back around our little table and settling back into her seat. "You must understand, my whole family resides here. If there was a chance you weren't what you seemed..." she lifted one deceptively delicate shoulder in a shrug. "And you weren't, were you?" she sighed gently. "Although not in the way I'd anticipated. Really, Lucius..." her voice came out soft and breathy, exasperated but almost unbearably fond.

"I get it," I muttered, pouring myself another cup of tea just to get the taste out of my mouth. The potion hadn't been bad, but the antidote was horrible.

"You do, do you?" she asked. There was almost a little _nervousness_ in her expression.

"Intellectually, it makes sense," I offered. It was the best I could do, because honestly telling her that I didn't mind would have been complete bullshit of the highest order.

"I _am_ sorry, my dear. Lucius does like to believe I'm frail and terribly delicate, but it was quite unfair of him to draw you into his little games."

In that moment, I could not have imagined anybody _less_ frail. "Well that's not very clever of him," I muttered.

Her mouth curved. "People see what they want to a lot of the time."

"Right," I said unhappily.

"Now, finish your cup of tea, dear, and we'll see about getting you some clothing. I'm afraid Hogwarts is going to be dreadfully boring for you, but you _will_ need to learn magic at some point..." She stood, and then paused, tapping her lip with one finger. "Oh, yes. I must remember to send the owl off to the Ministry. Now that I know you'll be staying, it would be remiss to leave your paperwork in the owlery."

I paused. "You hadn't... I thought that was already sent?"

"Certainly not _,_ " she said. "Elizabeth was watching, of course, so it had to go with the owl, but it would be quite a lot of work to remove the file from the Ministry records department once they'd processed it. I might be stuck with legal records of a daughter who didn't exist. Merlin, imagine the scandal if anybody found out." She shook her golden head and gestured for me to follow her. "Come along, then, we'll send that off now..."

Yeah, Narcissa Malfoy?

 _Actually terrifying._

"So, you write pornography?" She asked, just as I was getting up.

I stumbled over my chair.

"Um," I said.

"How... unique."

" _Um."_

"Do keep up, dear."

* * *

We travelled as a group to Diagon Alley. Narcissa never once let on anything that had passed between us, and Draco was clearly oblivious to any changed tensions. Lucius, on the other hand, peered at me once and quickly attributed my manner to nervousness.

"There's nothing to concern yourself with," he assured me, taking Draco's arm to Side-Along Apparate him while Narcissa took mine.

Draco gave me a haughty, superior look.

Boy, I thought, you have no fucking idea.

I wasn't sure how much I liked Narcissa touching me, to be honest. I twitched under the pressure of her hand. It wasn't conscious, but she gripped all the tighter for it. Then there was an ugly wrench in my stomach, the hot and sickly feeling of being turned inside out, and then - outdoor air, loud voices, hawkers. I blinked my eyes open.

I had expected that to be much worse than it was.

Honestly, I panicked myself into more intense nausea than this twice before breakfast. Huh.

Narcissa released my arm with a pleased pat upon my shoulder. "Very good," she murmured, and then she consulted a floating list - which, if I peeked at it from around her, looked very much like the Hogwarts supply list.

Lucius leaned in and tapped it with his wand, creating a perfect duplicate. "If you want to get the ingredients and stocks, I'll take the books. You'll have more time to take with Victoria's clothing, then, and we can regroup at Malkin's so Draco can get his robes for school... and some new dress robes, I think. The charms have almost worn through on his last set."

Draco gave his father a look of thinly-disguised despair. Lucius gave him a deeply unimpressed face right back. He looked at his toes instead, and then Lucius swept him away toward the book shop.

"I think we'll see about a regular wardrobe first," Narcissa said, glancing at me. "I'm sorry to say it, but you look quite sick in green. Twilfitt and Tattings, then, that's down the south side. Come," she held out her arm.

I took it, despite my misgivings about proximity to Narcissa. I was glad for it a moment later, because I was small and the crowd in Diagon Alley was large. The variety of people was insane, too: a man with all stone teeth, a woman with birds nesting cheerfully in her hair, a hook-nosed, vicious looking little person I soon realised was a goblin - there was a man on stilts and a woman zipping by on a broom. A flock of paper cranes folded from all different colours of paper zoomed past, darting and weaving through the crowd.

And, of course, school children.

There were so very many school children. Sticky-fingered, yelling, running thoughtlessly between adults in the crushing river of people making their way down the alley.

"This is _mad_ ," I said, once Narcissa drew us a bit out of the flow and toward a discreet, very highly polished wooden door.

"It always is, before the start of the school year," she said with a sigh. "It will calm down later in the year, you'll see."

She waved the door open and a silver bell jingled, soft and pleasant, above our heads. As the door slid closed the noise from outside dimmed. There was nothing but the quiet of the shop, broken only by a murmured conversation somewhere deeper inside.

The shop itself was decidedly not like a muggle clothing store. Off-the-rack was evidently not in the Malfoys' vocabulary, and the store reflected that. Grand and sweeping designs were shown off on mannequins, which batted their eyelashes over empty sockets and cheerfully paced the length of the display window. One of them was missing his head, which seemed not to trouble him.

The rest of the store had many one-of-a-kind pieces, presented more like art work than like clothing, and was lined with what looked like endless rolls of fabric. There was a display in the centre of the room, a thin wooden platform atop which a mannequin lounged, dressed in a silky grass green robe.

Narcissa was already examining colours next to my skin, gently drawing me around the edges of the shop and peering at my face beside each new colour. "No yellows, either, I see," she mused. "Or _pinks,_ Merlin _._.."

By the time the store assistant escorted a dour, hatched-faced lady in a pointed golden hat from the store and apologised for leaving Mrs Malfoy to wait, she had already decided on her short list, and the next few minutes of discussion consisted of _this grey, that violet - not heather, lavender, yes - wine and mulberry, not too red - charcoal, yes, lovely - chocolate brown, perhaps._

The assistant, a man in his early thirties with a pencil-thin moustache and long, delicate fingers, nodded and agreed with everything Narcissa said, apparently incapable of doing otherwise.

A few times I was tempted to interrupt just to remind her that I was an actual person and could in fact be trusted to look to my own clothing, but honestly she was picking at least all the same colours I'd have picked - and I knew nothing at all about wizarding clothes, except that they wore a great deal of fabric.

The store assistant asked me to hop up on a stool so he could take my measurements, which "he" did by means of an enchanted tape measure. The numbers wrote themselves down, too. Magic certainly seemed handy.

Narcissa did deign to consult me once or twice, and my answers were predictable: skin-covering and tight, no loose fluttering cloth to make a mess of. She didn't seem terribly enthused, and she didn't actually take very many of my responses on board - which made me wonder why she'd asked.

"Very good, very good. Superb taste as always. Now, if that will be all?"

"Unless Twilfitt and Tattings has begun selling Hogwarts robes..?"

"Alas, no," mourned the store assistant. His moustache turned down with his mouth, mourning with him. I stifled a soft snort. "That harridan still has her agreement with the school, and the children may go to no other store to be fitted for their robes." He made it sound very dramatic, but given how much money Narcissa was about to blow here it hardly seemed likely to bankrupt them.

Still. Interesting. "Do they have some kind of exclusive agreement with Hogwarts?" I asked cautiously.

The store assistant blinked down at me like he'd just been made aware that I could actually talk to him all on my own. "Yes, little miss. It's a travesty. The businessman's blood that runs in my veins boils to see free enterprise stifled in -"

This was, evidently, a topic upon which he was capable of expounding at length.

I looked sideways at Narcissa, who gave him a moment or two more out of politeness.

"Thank you," she said sharply then, and tempered her tone with a smile. "We're in something of a rush," she admitted. "I'll need several of these dropped off this evening," she added.

By the time we were done with Twilfitt and Tattings I was seriously tired. The day had been extraordinarily long, between dimensional travel and medical magic and Narcissa holding me at wandpoint. Between all these things, the last thing I needed was a drawn out shopping trip.

Luckily, there was little enough to be going on with: a trip to the apothecary, a stop at Malkin's and a very important ending at Olivander's.

The apothecary was a dim, dank place with an ugly smell: something woody and old, something mouldering, something neck-ruffling and dry that made me want to scratch. They sold standard potions kits for first years, which Narcissa disdained in favour of assembling her own. It contained all the same ingredients, but she was adamant about selecting them by hand.

She pointed out some of what she was doing to me, and in several cases explained how to pick certain ingredients and let me do it myself.

"If you're not careful about these things," she informed me loftily, while watching as I picked through an assortment of tiny black carapaces, selecting the whole and shiny ones, "they'll foist the lowest standard of their product upon you."

"Upon you, Mrs Malfoy?" called the storekeeper, who seemed to know everybody who'd come in, and treated them with equal good cheer, "never!"

"So you say," she murmured in response.

Despite her criticism, the apothecary was more than happy to chatter cheerfully as he bagged, boxed and otherwise packaged our oddly-shaped purchases. "Another one for Slytherin, is it?" he asked, peering at me with a smile.

"It seems likely," I said, although privately I doubted it. I was not what you'd call ambitious.

Narcissa smiled indulgently, miniaturised our purchases and put them away. Then we took ourselves out of the store and back into the seething throng of shoppers - and off toward Madam Malkin's Robes For All Occasions.

I could see immediately why it wasn't the Malfoys' favourite haunt - it was filled with cheerful but unpretentious staff, along with Madam Malkin herself, and the business all seemed to revolve around bespoke fittings of clothing pulled from the rack. It was clearly a brisk and efficient trade, but not very personal.

"Now, then, another for Hogwarts, is it?"

It was clearly a rhetorical question, because I found myself shoved onto a stool and propped up by the threat of an aggressively invested tape measure. Even as still and careful as I was, its investigation seemed a trifle too thorough.

Several moments later, Draco appeared, looking a little wrung out, on the stool next to me.

He may not have liked me much, but at that point in time we shared a glance and had a moment of intensely agreeable communication: this was deeply unpleasant and we wanted to leave.

It's the little things.

Of course, I, like an absolute moron, had forgotten about what was meant to happen when Draco stepped into Madam Malkin's. So I was completely blindsided when a tiny boy with shaggy dark hair was shoved onto the stool next to me.

This was how I met Harry.

* * *

Like something in particular about this chapter? Drop me a review.


	4. Wandwood

Meeting Harry was both less exciting and a little more disappointing than you might think.

Initial surprise: Harry was _tiny_.He was certainly not Daniel Radcliffe, that's for sure. Draco wasn't exactly a giant, but he was at least the expected sort of height and general size for an eleven year old. Harry looked... smaller, except for the giant knot of sticky tape that was keeping his glasses in one piece. He also looked completely bemused by the tape measure - and everything else, too. He looked fascinated, wondering... but I also wondered if maybe he wasn't a little overwhelmed and shocky.

It could have been me projecting, because I kind of was, but...

I was fiercely and uncomfortably reminded that this was a boy who lived in a closet and whose relatives regularly refused to feed him, and I shifted awkwardly on my feet. Draco noticed his robes and, having determined that he was also a Hogwarts first year, attempted to strike up a conversation with him.

 _Have you got a broom? Do you play Quidditch_?

I supposed these were the accepted questions for young boys, the equivalent of asking if somebody followed the AFL, and if so whether or not they were a Collingwood supporter - vital questions, in some circles.

Harry, of course, missed every possible social cue, shifting awkwardly while Draco tried to puzzle it out. It was a lot like watching two puppies try to get to know each other: suspicious, standoffish, adorably clumsy.

"-but I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been - surely you've thought about it?"

Harry mumbled something, looking anywhere but at Draco. Those glasses he was wearing were truly ugly.

Whatever he'd said, Draco heard it, because he looked suddenly quite suspicious. "What about your parents?"

Harry had an expressive little face, and his expression tightened. "They're dead," he said coldly.

"Oh," said Draco uncomfortably, "Sorry." Then: "But they were _our_ kind, weren't they?"

For a bleak second, I wondered what would happen if Harry said no. I didn't wait for either of them to go on. Part of me wanted to tell Draco off for asking at all, but I was well aware that he'd resent it terribly - a strange new older sister shows up an immediately begins to police his behaviour? Oh _dear_.

"Hey, I'm starting this year, too," I said, leaning over a little so I could peer past Draco. There was a needle and thread dancing about my hem line that made an annoyed, almost human noise at my unexpected movement.

Harry blinked at me, and I scrambled for something to say. He had no social skills. _I had no social skills_. Oh god. Maybe something comforting?

"...I have no idea what I'm doing whatsoever," I added with a bright smile.

"...Oh," said Harry. "Er..." He looked to Draco, of all people, as though he needed help.

"Ignore her." Draco rolled his eyes, but not before shooting me a _Are we seriously related?_ look.

Quietly, I sulked.

Note to self: self-deprecating comments about my own competence would not fly with a bunch of eleven year olds in the same way they would with a bunch of young adults. See, all the adults in _my_ generation basically felt like helpless babies trying and failing to feed ourselves commercially produced pots of mashed up fruit. This experience was interspersed with brief, shining moments of competence following which we all ran around ripping our hair out screaming "taxes!" and "rent?" and "oh god mortality?"

Needless to say, this was not the experience of life for an eleven year old in the nineties, and Harry had no common ground from which to approach that comment.

I sulked harder.

I kind of... disliked him, for it.

Yes, okay, it was stupid, but I was conscious that he was important. He was a linchpin in the plot that would very likely impact my life, and I wanted him to think well of me. And then I'd tried and he still didn't, so I resented him for it.

He didn't seem to be making much of an impression on Draco, either.

Still... I looked at Harry out of the corner of my eye from where he was talking to Draco, looking ever more awkward about it. Harry just ...didn't look well cared-for. I didn't have a huge amount of experience in noticing that, but I was looking for it, and as expected I found it.

The magical world was terrifyingly real, in its own way, and I was pretty glad to have entered it under the sheltering arm of the Malfoy family, which was essentially a shield made of money and corruption for at least a few more years. Becoming aware of it like Harry did...

A huge shadow passed the front window of Malkin's shop, resolving itself into an enormous man when I turned to look.

"I say. Look at that man." Draco's jaw had unhinged a little.

"That's Hagrid," Harry said, sounding proud. "He works at Hogwarts."

"Oh." Draco's expression smoothed out, bored and unimpressed once again. "Yes, I've heard of him. Sort of a servant, isn't he?"

This didn't seem to make Harry any happier. It wasn't surprising, since Hagrid was probably the first person to be kind to him in a very long time.

I frowned thoughtfully after Harry when he left, watching Hagrid's face darken as he turned to glance back at Draco. He had a broad face, flushed red around the edges either from some constitutional difference or from over-indulging. It was easy to see the expressions move across it. Now _there_ was a man I'd play poker with any day.

"Strange boy," I said, although really I was stuck thinking about the Dursleys.

"He can't have been lying about his parents," Draco said coolly, "since he was here with that - Hagrid."

There was presumably an insult that he had no words for and which had been replaced with Hagrid's name. I nodded. Then I hesitated.

"Is that man human?" I finally murmured to Draco.

He gave me a distinctly unimpressed look. "Of course not," he sneered. "I'd be surprised if he was even half wizard."

That... was not the response I'd been expecting. Rita Skeeter had revealed Hagrid's mother to be a giant in the year of Voldemort's resurrection, and he'd been very upset at the time. Were things here different to the books? That idea filled me with anxiety.

"- though Merlin knows _what_ he is," Draco sniffed. "Probably half troll."

Oh. I bit my lower lip, wondering at the comment. Was it better to be part one thing than another? How did they decide? I scratched my neck. Flitwick and Fleur Delacour had not been entirely human, either, but they'd not seemed at all ashamed of it. That must mean that giants, specifically, were bad news.

I ignored Draco's superior expression. He was a kid and there was no point getting upset about him. "You said - about the school Houses - that all of our family had been sorted into one of them? All of them? - There are four Houses, right?"

The sneer returned with a vengeance. "Don't you even know _that_?"

I tipped my head back and took a deep breath for patience. "Draco, there's no Hogwarts in the reality I just came from. There's not even any magic, so a school to teach you about it would be completely pointless."

He looked... disgusted. "But there must be magic. How would anything _work_?"

"Not like here," I said, watching a floating needle hem Draco's robe. " _Really_ not like here."

Of course, having no magic also meant no Dark Lords or Dementors or Horcruxes or anything . Unless you considered the PM a soul sucking monster, which -

Well. I wasn't ruling it out, precisely.

"There's really no magic?" Draco asked after a moment. There was a sense of horrified fascination to the question.

I shook my head. "None."

Then: "How do they know you're not a _squib_?" He made the most revolted face and leaned away as though being a squib might somehow be contagious. Personally I thought he was in more danger from falling off his stool.

Better to rid him of that idea quickly, though. "Marlow loaned me his wand when I came here. I-" I hesitated. "I didn't believe I was a witch because they don't exist where I was living. I blew up a chandelier."

"Oh." Draco relaxed. "Well, that's all right then."

"That's you done, dear," trilled the plump Madame Malkin, arriving just as her needle finished its work and fell still. She held out one arm to help me from the stool and flashed and absent but friendly smile.

"Thank you," I said automatically, stepping down. I very nearly shoved my hand in a pocket - which my current clothing didn't have - to get my wallet. Then I paused, because I had no wallet. I wasn't paying for anything. I was twelve.

I frowned. "Our parents should return shortly -"

Malkin waved one hand. "I went to school with your parents, dear. They'll be here in their own time or not at all. In the mean time feel free to look around."

And then she'd dismissed me and turned to adjust the hang of Draco's school robes with her wand. I raised myself to my toes to meet his eyes over her shoulder. He didn't seem very impressed, although what he was put out about now remained uncertain.

I was too tired to think too much about - well, anything, really. I admit I zoned out for a few minutes watching Malkin fuss over Draco. I was so weirded out by the thought of him as my brother. I'd never had one before. Mind you, I'd never been a _witch_ before, either.

I registered that Malkin was finishing up with Draco and bustling off toward her till, but mostly my attention was focused inwards. This was so strange, all of it. I felt overwhelmed and I had no idea how I was going t process it all -

"-prefect! That's the whole family, you know -"

"Mother, watch where -"

I was very nearly bowled over by the delighted flailing of a middle aged woman who rounded a clothes rack in a state of great excitement.

It was so quick that I hadn't even noticed her: a cheerful voice, much too close, and then an elbow in my shoulder when she gestured too wildly.

I wasn't used to my smaller size yet, either, so it registered as a great deal more forceful than it really was. I squeaked and pinwheeled one arm clumsily. "Motherf-" _No_. No. I clamped my mouth closed on the curse and instead tried to imagine Lucius's facial expression if he'd heard me say it in public.

I grabbed one of the racks supporting Malkin's robes to steady myself, then slung my hair back from my face to see who'd knocked me over.

Immediately there were hands upon me, gentle but also completely unwelcome. I went tense, feeling all of my muscles lock up -

"-so sorry, dear, I didn't even _see_ you there."

She was a sweet-faced woman, maybe in her forties - which, if she was a witch meant at least her fifties - with reddish hair and a comfortably overweight figure. She rambled on as she patted me down like I somehow required _dusting_.

"Mother," said the boy with her, mortified.

I blinked stupidly, and moved away from her fluttering hands. "It's all right," I got out nervously, and then felt a little proud that it hadn't come out as _please don't touch me strange lady_. Then, because it seemed like she was still coming closer, "really. I was a million miles away. I didn't even notice. I'm sure I was in the way."

I held up my hands to ward her away and the quickly tuned to make sure I hadn't messed up the clothing on the racks. Surely the lady wouldn't grab me from behind?

"Oh," she paused. "Well, I'm still sorry. I should have been paying more attention -"

"Another prefect is it?" Madame Malkin cried, arriving on the scene and causing a welcome distraction.

The woman was immediately diverted and directed a pleased smile at the proprietress. "Yes. That will be the whole family. I was just saying as much - hop on the stool, Percy, there's a good boy -"

Percy? Prefect? I turned back to examine them.

Huh. Percy was... not quite as I'd imagined, really. Yes, he had red hair and freckles, but where I'd been expecting a splash of bright orange-red his hair was actually a sedate reddish brown. He was a bit clumsy with adolescence, gangly, but nothing out of the ordinary, and where I'd been anticipating a pompous stiffness there was just the long suffering resignation of a child with an embarrassing mother.

He saw me looking and I quickly looked away, which left me looking at Draco instead. He was watching with an expression of bored superiority, having finally been freed from his stool to join me in waiting.

"It _was_ her fault," he said critically.

I shrugged. There was no harm in it, excepting the overly familiar touching afterwards.

He sniffed, like my non-answer wasn't nearly good enough for him. "She's a fright, anyway," he muttered, watching her gesture happily. Maybe she was, a little, I thought, but she also seemed pretty content.

" _Where_ is father?"

I shook my head. "I'm sure he'll be along. But," I added, "that boy's being fitted for Hogwarts robes, too - they said he was a Prefect."

This recaptured Draco's attention, which was just as I'd intended. "Really," he murmured quietly.

There was something in the look he gave Percy next that was oddly familiar. I could almost see the gears turning inside his skull, very nearly pick the pattern of his thoughts. It wasn't the same interest I had in things - not for the simple sake of knowing them, or of having that information if it became necessary. Behind Draco's calculating eyes was a restless intellect, applied rather than theoretical, and waiting to leverage what he found.

For a moment, I almost liked the little shit.

"I doubt he's in Slytherin," he said dismissively, eyeing Molly like she was something he'd stepped in, and that moment passed quickly.

"There you are, I thought we'd lost you!" Aaand another unexpected redhead appeared, this one older and balding in the middle of his head - he was skinny, pale and freckled, with matching patches at the elbows of his robe. There was a small person clutching at his hand. A young Ginny, I presumed. She'd be - nine, maybe ten, I supposed.

Arthur Weasley looked more like one of my aging lit professors than a government employee. I watched them interact from the corner of my eye while 'browsing' through a rack of robes. The colours for the season, if such a thing existed in wizarding fashion, seemed to be very bright. I wondered if they actually sold nice, muted colours here, other than the Hogwarts robes.

Draco had escaped following his quick dismissal of the family, and was not immediately to be found. I wasn't too worried but - well, it felt like my responsibility to keep an eye on him, at least a little. I raised myself to my toes - being short was going to get old, fast - and peered over the racks.

I spotted him immediately because of his shining pale hair. He was idly leafing through a rack next to a display of sporting wear in bright, contrasting colours - Quidditch robes, I supposed.

"-lmost bowled this poor thing over," Molly said, waving one arm in my general direction. It caught my attention and I looked back at her directly.

"Did you really?" Malkin said, looking up from Percy's new robe. "I do hope you're all right, Miss Malfoy." She did actually look a bit concerned. It stood to reason - I'd bet my front teeth the Malfoys were the Wizarding equivalent of rich, litigious assholes. And it _was_ her shop, so she'd probably be responsible.

There was an awkward pause while all of the Weasleys turned to look at me with varying degrees of surprise and judgement.

"I'm still in one piece," I said, addressing myself to Malkin with a very fixed smile. "Absolutely no harm done, and I'm certain it was more than half my fault for standing around in a daze anyway."

She gave me an uncertain smile back.

Silence.

I swallowed. "I'm sure we'll both be out of your hair soon," I assured her.

There was another pause, and then Molly seemed to decide I was not in fact an actual viper. She cleared her throat. "You'll be starting at Hogwarts too, then, dear? My youngest boy's beginning this year too - you'll be in some of the same classes."

This was, in a way, even worse. Small talk wasn't exactly my strong suit, and I was certainly not very good at it. And now here I was, stuck representing a very proud family to people who didn't even like them. Social politics at its finest.

"I'm looking forward to attending," I said cautiously. I could hardly say I'd look forward to meeting Ron - there was every chance he and Draco would be at each other's throats before classes even started. Just because I didn't like Draco didn't mean I'd side against him - that would make my home life difficult.

Malkin had evidently decided that nobody was about to come to blows. She returned her attention to Percy and then shuffled off to attend to a new customer while her tools continued on in her absence. Which... left me with the Weasleys and no buffer.

"Going to be in Slytherin, I expect," Arthur predicted. He didn't sound thrilled - and, in fact, he was pulling Ginny a little closer to him. Whether it was intentional or not didn't really matter to me - I was still kind of bewildered.

I fought not to let my incredulity show. What, did he think I was going to leap up and physically attack her or something?

Well, okay, considering what Lucius did to her in the novels -

But that hadn't even happened yet. Also? _I was twelve_. Maybe not actually twelve, but I looked twelve, and everybody thought I was twelve.

So far I had spent most of my time in this world not saying things I felt like saying and trying not to step on any toes, and I was getting steadily sick of it, but I prayed for patience and kept at it. I shifted my eyes away from his hand where it was clutching at Ginny's.

"I'm told one never knows until one arrives there," I said mildly. I wasn't sure of the answer myself. Maybe I'd be in Slytherin, but it was more likely, and I'd genuinely prefer, that I'd be sorted into Ravenclaw. I was as unambitious as they came, and I didn't feel very cunning.

"That's a proper attitude," Percy opined with all the confidence and authority only a teenager could muster. Arthur looked at him briefly, but it was neither a rebuking nor an approving look - just a glance, quick, assessing.

I smiled. On an adult it would have seemed indulgent, maybe even condescending, but on me it probably just looked like a smile.

"Is it just the two sons, then?" I asked Molly, hoping to steer the conversation to a place from which she could hold court and I didn't have to answer any questions or do anything but nod and smile and make bland comments here and there.

Small talk. I hated small talk, but I couldn't leave the store - we were meeting Lucius and Narcissa here, and if I left I'd be out in the human flood of Diagon Alley without a tether - and I certainly couldn't just wander away inside the place. That would be pretty rude.

Maybe my 'parents' wouldn't mind if I did that, but, well. I would.

I was of the opinion that being polite was always the best practice - you could go on to be a bitch later if you felt like you needed to, but it was awfully hard to move even the most casual relationship back in the other direction.

Then I realised I'd forgotten Ginny entirely, even though she was obviously part of the family with her flaming locks and her grip on Arthur's hand. "And your daughter," I added belatedly, nodding to her. "Hi."

She looked at me and blinked. "Hi," she said back. Then she was silent.

Ah...

It occurred to me that I had no idea how to actually talk to somebody who was the same age I was meant to be. Draco, sure, but Draco was a manipulative self-aggrandising little bastard and all I had to do was make him feel more important than I was.

I'd been terrible at talking to Harry, too. Bugger. School was going to be _hard_.

"Merlin, no," Molly said with a smile that was stuck somewhere between cheerful and exasperated. Her sweet, plain face was quite pretty when she smiled, and it brought out the faint happy lines around her mouth. "Seven children, and six of them boys. Percy here's in the middle, and Ginny's my youngest," she smiled benignly at her daughter, who smiled back. "Bill and Charlie have graduated, so you won't meet them, but there will be four at Hogwarts this year, so I'm sure you'll run into them all eventually-"

"If you're unlucky," murmured Percy, although when I glanced at him he was watching the scissors snip a stray thread from his shoulder. No prizes for guessing who he was talking about, though.

"That's an enormous brood," I commented. I knew the Weasley family was large, certainly. And I knew all the characters - good god, all the _people_ \- in it. But when Molly said 'four at Hogwarts this year' it brought into terrifying relief the part where Ginny, Ron, the twins and Percy had all been born within six years of each other. That was a lot of children. A _lot_ of children.

Five children within six years of each other sounded awful. I actually struggled to think of a less pleasant household to abide in and came up blank. Maybe Azkaban? Christ.

Some aspect of that thought must have shown on my face, because Molly laughed.

I covered my mouth with one hand, grimacing. "Sorry, I didn't mean -"

"Father!" And that was Draco's voice, _thank every deity ever_. I could not stand around making small talk with these people much longer. Molly was friendly but loud and overfamiliar, and Arthur was still looking at me with a fair degree of suspicion.

"Is that so," drawled Lucius's voice. He came into view trailing Draco like an overeager puppy. I nearly sagged with relief, even as Molly and Arthur went rigid and... bristled.

"Making a nuisance of yourself in public again, Weasley?" he wondered, staring down his nose at Molly.

"An accident," said Arthur shortly.

Lucius's eyes shifted from Molly to Arthur and, wow. Actually wow. I had never seen any one person inject more disdain in a single look than he managed in that moment. For one wild second I wondered if he was using magic to look that haughty and contemptuous.

But no, it was just sheer overwhelming natural talent. He hummed as though he didn't quite believe Arthur, and then his hand fell gently but heavily upon my head. It was a proprietary gesture and I tried really hard not to flinch from the casual touch. He was making a point, obviously. There wasn't any call to undermine him in public. If it still bothered me later, I could try to talk to him about it... but I suspected I'd be picking my battles with the Malfoys, and I'd have to plan them out carefully.

"Are you well, Victoria?"

"Fine, thank you," I said clearly instead of telling him to take his hand away. I had to keep repeating myself, too. How annoying. Draco shot me an annoyed look and I realised abruptly that I'd ruined his game - which was, essentially, using his father's influence to stir shit for other people.

Well. That was... disturbing.

The expression that crossed my face must have been completely toxic, because his face changed to match.

I lifted my chin and ignored him.

Nobody was watching our quick exchange anyway - except Ginny, who followed it in silence. Who knew what she even read into it?

"I suppose the sheer excitement of purchasing something new must be overwhelming to some," Lucius was musing, pretty much as though he was speaking to himself.

Draco smirked, as though this was even a little bit appropriate. I kind of wanted to elbow Lucius in the ribs - well, the hip - and hiss at him to _be goddamn civil_. No wonder Draco was such a little shit all the time.

"Come along," Lucius said then, ignoring the reddening of Arthur's face and the glower Percy was directing at all of us, although I was sure he'd noticed. "There's a rank smell in this place. We shouldn't linger."

 _Are you sure it's not the absolute shit coming from your mouth_? I wondered, but declined to comment because silence was clearly the path of least resistance.

I ground my teeth and followed Lucius out. Draco dogged his heels like a small, adoring pet.

"I shouldn't have left you for so long, but I ran into an acquaintance. Was everything all right? They didn't - say anything to you?"

I shook my head. "Just stuff about - school, sorting into Houses, that sort of thing. Nothing... unkind." I decided not to mention how Arthur had clung to his daughter like I was going to kidnap her. What would be the point?

Lucius led us across the alley, which was still incredibly busy. Something zoomed past my head and it took me a moment to recognise it as a tiny owl. A very short man yelled and ran after it, long purple cloak dragging upon the ground. God, wizards were _weird_.

Lucius moved as though he was fully prepared to walk right through anybody who got in his way, and it was easiest to just follow in his wake.

"She knocked her into a clothing rack," Draco said plaintively.

I shot him an annoyed look. As though he cared? He just wanted to make somebody's day worse to prove he could.

"Yes. But I was standing about in a daze like an idiot. She was excited. Accidents happen. Honestly it was more upsetting when she tried to dust me off afterwards."

Lucius made a derisive noise in his throat.

Draco wrinkled his nose. "You can bathe before I have to touch you," he decided.

"Don't worry," I said drily, "you won't."

Ollivander's was our next stop, and I was pretty sure it was our last for the day. That was a lucky thing because I was just about swaying on my feet. In the presence of an adrenalin rush I could go for days, but this stop-start nervousness and bewilderment, interspersed as it was with a flood of knew knowledge and experiences? I was pretty ready to drop.

Ollivander's was silent as soon as the door closed behind us. Everything was muffled and dusty - and possibly muffled _by_ the dust. The interior here smelled sweet and woody with a hint of something a little like vanillin. The light outside shone through the windows and caught little bits of dust in its golden glow.

It reminded me a little of the best kinds of libraries, or maybe of my university's reading room.

Narcissa was already there, peering at a haphazard display of wand-carrying accessories. There was wood polish and a plethora of straps and bands and cases and a little repair kit with several bold-text warnings on it. The light from outside flamed on her hair, haloing her as she turned to us.

"All right, then?" she asked, smiling. She went to Draco first, smoothing one hand over his hair.

"Fine," I said, before Draco could open his mouth again, and I smiled to soften the sharpness of the sound.

Draco sniffed.

Narcissa looked between us thoughtfully. "I see," she said, and the horrifying thing was: I thought she actually might have. She was quietly terrifying, and very perceptive.

Draco was already distracted again, thank goodness: now he was just about bouncing with enthusiasm, because he was pretty much surrounded by wands. I supposed a kid from a wizarding family looked forward to this day for a very long time.

Narcissa let him be and turned to me instead. She hesitated, apparently unwilling to reach out the way she had with her son. Not least, I suspected, because I might reject her in public.

I was torn between applauding somebody showing restraint and feeling sort of guilty about it. I mean, she was... supposed to be, at least... my mother. It's perfectly reasonable to touch your parent or child, right?

I was too tired for this shit.

Awkwardly, I ignored her.

Ollivander emerged from some shadowy corner of the shop, and while I couldn't say what I'd expected him to look like - except _weird_ \- his frail-seeming frame and watery pale eyes weren't in any way disappointing.

His eyes zeroed in on Lucius and Draco, bypassing Narcissa and I entirely. "I've been expecting you, young master Malfoy," he said, reaching one spindly fingered hand out to touch Draco's jaw.

Nobody stopped him, although Draco didn't seem happy. Apparently very good wandmakers were allowed to be as eccentric as they liked.

He stared at Lucius next. "Elm and dragon heartstring, wasn't it? And it still performs like new?" An enchanted tape measure zoomed around the corner of a shelf to fling itself at Draco and measure his... everything.

"Perfectly," said Lucius, stiffly and repressively.

"Inherited from your father's line, wasn't it? Elm, eighteen inches, rigid wood..."

Oh my _god_.

"And not every wizard can handle an eighteen inch wand."

I coughed.

"Victoria?" Narcissa sounded a little alarmed.

"It requires a disciplined hand," he went on, peering intently at Lucius like he was expecting some kind of response.

Lucius shifted on his feet, staring right past Ollivander. "Yes," he said, "well. It's fine."

"And when you discharge-"

I was certain the next word was going to be _spells_ , but oh my god I couldn't - I was going to _die._

"You've gone quite red, are you all right? Victoria? Vic-"

"Just a-" an inelegant snort, "- moment," I gasped, and dissolved into helpless cackling.

 _Eighteen inches of rigid wood that required a disciplined hand oh my god_. _Yes, Lucius, let's all hear about the discharge._

When I looked up, everybody was watching me.

"Ehem," I cleared my throat, trying to stifle my completely inelegant snorting laughter. "Eh- _hem_. Oh my goodness," I managed, covering my mouth with one hand and trying not to explode in hysterics again. "I have... no idea... what came over me. I must have - er, overexerted myself today."

Lucius looked puzzled and perhaps concerned. Draco looked completely unconcerned - more exasperated - but also sort of puzzled.

"No trouble," said Ollivander cheerfully, returning to the precarious stack of boxes he was digging through, which made me wonder if he was doing it on purpose. There _had_ to be some other way to discuss the bloody wand.

He handed a wand to Draco, which quickly recaptured both his and his father's attention.

Next to me, Narcissa was rubbing her forehead delicately and gently and a lot like she had a headache coming on.

"Tell me again, dear, how old are you?" she murmured quietly, low enough that the others didn't hear.

"Um," I said.

Ollivander had bypassed our awkward moment and was handing another wand to Draco, who struggled to keep up with all the different bits of wood thrust in his direction. As soon as he'd laid hands on one, Ollivander was yanking it away and hurling the box somewhere.

They must have had some kind of charm upon them, because they all fell with a cushioned _fwap_ instead of an ugly clatter.

"Ash and phoenix fea- no, no, definitely not. Dragon heartstring and holly, sixteen inches, inflexible, go on, let's see it - no, goodness gracious no -" and on, and on.

I'd thought that only Harry's wand selection was this laborious, but it looked as though that was pretty normal, if you considered how long Draco was taking.

"Never fear, never fear," Ollivander said, sounding more and more cheerful the harder Draco was to match. "Perhaps dragon heartstring isn't for you. Phoenix feathers or unicorn tail hair, that's the ticket -" and he shuffled off, digging through boxes again.

Then there was the issue of wood. He tried chestnut, hazel, cypress, rowan, cedar, elm - he tried the only birch wand he had in store - "From the Hogsmeade branch, you understand, bit of a mix-up, but perhaps - no, no, not that one!" - and he moved on to weirder and stranger wood as he went.

"Elder?" he remarked at one point, and I felt Narcissa twitch next to me.

"Surely not," she said repressively.

"Bah, superstition," Ollivander responded, and handed over the wand. "Paired with unicorn hair, there's no tendency to impurity. Thirteen inches, unyielding. Show me."

Draco flicked the wand and somewhere deep in the shop there was a sound a lot like a cat screeching. He scowled.

"Clearly not. Here, hawthorn and unicorn tail hair, ten inches, reasonably pliant, let me see - Oh!" A happy exclamation followed, because Draco had produced a profusion of green and pink sparks that threw prettily coloured light off the walls.

Narcissa rushed forward to take Draco by one shoulder and press her lips to his forehead. "Oh, _Draco_ ," she said, delighted.

I tilted my head, watching curiously. Even Lucius was on his feet clapping his son on the shoulder - ever so manly, that - before wrapping one arm around him and pulling him close.

"Father," hissed Draco, which just made Lucius's smile turn faintly teasing.

This was presumably, then, a very high-value family moment. I waited, unsure if I should say anything - or if so, what I should say. Was it really an achievement? Did I congratulate him? I hesitated.

"Are you going to congratulate me, sister?" he asked, lifting his chin and raising his eyebrows.

Thank god for Draco being an arrogant brat, seriously.

"Of course," I said as easily as if I'd known precisely what to do the whole time. "It's a lovely wand. Congratulations are in order, and I hope it serves you well and faithfully." Was that too stilted? Fuck it, I was an awkward and stilted goddamn person.

Draco looked briefly taken aback. He blinked. "...Thanks."

I glanced at Lucius, thinking, _please don't make me hug him_ , but he looked indulgent and pleased, replete with some personal satisfaction. Well. Good. I exhaled.

"Faithfully indeed," Ollivander said, examining the box of Draco's wand for whatever price he'd put on it previously. "They say hawthorn is a wood for people of subtle and complex natures, and no core serves as faithfully as a unicorn's tail hair - I recall the mare I took that one from, young man," he went on, giving the wand one last wistful look before he returned it. "She almost ran me through. I didn't realise until twenty minutes later that she had a foal..."

Draco clutched his new wand to himself. "She was - powerful, then?"

"All unicorns are extremely magical. That's why we use them. An Ollivander's wand has one of only three cores: unicorn tail hair, phoenix feather and dragon heartstring. Other makers will use any bits of magic dug up by a witch or wizard - troll whiskers and kneazel hairs and all sorts of rubbish..."

This was evidently a topic upon which Ollivander could expound at length, and while it was fascinating, I was _so fucking tired_.

Even as I thought it, Ollivander turned upon me. "And who's this? I hadn't thought to see your other child," he said, peering at me with his watery pale eyes. "She was - not here. But here you are," he added pensively.

"I'm... back now?"

"And with such an unusual accent." He reached out one hand, but I was pretty much done with strangers touching me and I jerked away from his fingers.

"I - er, that is -"

"Quite all right, lass." His lips twisted into a smile.

I nodded, relieved to hear it.

That didn't stop him from grabbing my wrist in his deceptively frail-looking grip and pulling me to the centre of the room, where the tape measure attacked me.

I fought the urge to suck my belly in when it wrapped immediately around my waist and then yelped when it wound around my _bust_ , for fuck's sakes, _inappropriate._ The next thing it tried to measure was my columella and that distracted me pretty successfully, because, _why_.

"Birch and unicorn hair, eight inches, stiff," Ollivander said, holding out a wand. Carefully I took it. It didn't feel like... anything, really, which...

"Well?"

I gave it a gentle flick. One shelf snapped and deposited a pile of wand boxes on the floor. I flinched.

Ollivander took this in easy stride, took it from me and handed me another. "Rowan and phoenix feather, swishy, give it a -" I waved it.

The clock caught fire.

I held it back to Ollivander like it was a live snake.

More wands followed. Ash and aspen, hawthorn and elm, vine and dogwood, hazel and larch and yew -

I broke a lot of things.

"This is a very unusual combination," Ollivander said at one point, "cherry wood is highly prized in Japan. But I do have to caution you that with the dragon heartstring it's quite volatile - still, when it works, there's no match like it. Fourteen inches and swishy. Go on, lass, give-"

The whole window shattered, spraying glass over a pair of passersby. The tall, heavyset woman cast a swift charm that shielded them. The shards fell like a sheet before they touched the skin of her or the boy with her, although one of them still sliced through the feather upon her hat.

The boy looked remarkably like a young gorilla - long arms and small eyes, with big hands and feet. He stared at me, and then looked at the shards.

Bugger.

"Oops," I said. Then, because there was certainly no muffling glass now and the streetside sounds were all pouring in: "Sorry? Sorry."

The woman gave me a vile look and tugged her boy along with her. Her feather stayed behind.

"Was that Mifanwy Goyle?" asked Narcissa, leaning closer to peer through the window.

I blinked, because, well, _Goyle_ , I knew that name, and I supposed the description fit, but -

"-Hmm, no," Ollivander said, lazily waving his wand at the broken window. It repaired itself without apparent effort, and the noises from the street stopped leaking into the sanctuary of Ollivander's shop. "Let me see, let me see..."

And then he wandered off again to find another combination.

His discarded tape measure whipped one end toward me to measure the circumference of my ankle. Vindictively, and also to keep the evil thing still, I stomped upon it.

I took the next three wands Ollivander gave to me and tried them out - with less spectacular results, thank god - but I was becoming genuinely tired of waving bits of wood around and wrecking shit.

"Tricky customer, eh?" Ollivander was saying, sounding utterly delighted despite how I was trashing his shop.

"How long can this possibly take?" Draco asked, crossing his arms. "Are you sure she's actually a witch?"

" _Draco_ ," hissed Lucius, sounding scandalised at the very suggestion.

"Well, I mean -"

"A muggle or a Squib wouldn't get anything out of any of these wands," Ollivander said placidly, showing up again with a new armful of boxes. He smiled happily. "We're certainly getting into uncommon combinations now. The dragon heartstring is correct, I think - powerful core, that, although a little temperamental."

Oh, good, just what I needed: a wand with a mean disposition. "Are you sure?"

"Not at all. The wand chooses the witch, Miss Malfoy - but if we have to try every wand in this shop, we certainly shall!" I looked around. That was a _lot_ of wands. "Yew and dragon heartstring, seventeen inches, unyielding," he handed it over.

I waved. It set a book on fire. I sincerely hoped it wasn't important.

He took it back.

Rinse.

Repeat.

"Beech and dragon heartstring, fourteen inches, swishy." I took it, flinching and preparing for another tragic explosion of _god knows what but nothing good_.

Instead, blue ribbons and golden sparks shot out the end, tumbling down around me and setting the store alight with pretty dancing sparklies.

"Ohh," I said, peering up at the roof, where the golden glow was fading slowly. "Is that it? Is this one okay-?"

"Oh, yes," Ollivander declared, smiling brightly. "Oh, definitely. Beech for precision and artistry; dragon heartstring for power, flexible and long - that will be an excellent wand for charms, Miss Malfoy, you may count upon it."

Charms. Hm. Not defence or transfiguration or anything that seemed... well, powerful and impressive. I rubbed my nose thoughtfully. Still, charms seemed to make life more comfortable and convenient, so that was well and good.

"Well done," said Lucius quietly, and to my relief there was no jubilant back-clapping or cuddling or kisses - just Lucius's hand on my elbow and Narcissa's warm smile.

"At least you got one in the end," Draco said, shifting uncomfortably.

I was tempted to raise my eyebrow and ask why he wasn't congratulating me, but I just couldn't muster the energy to care enough. "True," I agreed ruefully instead.

Ollivander led the Malfoys to the tiny register to pay for our wands. "They say that a young witch with a beechwood wand has an old soul," he said to me, handing it over.

I blinked, and felt my eyebrows rise. "...I would agree with that assessment, yes," I said after a pause.

I took the wand without waiting to see if he responded. Mine was a very plain wand, made of buttery-pale wood, smooth and sleek and tapered. I glanced sideways at Draco's, which had a blunted tip but a carefully wrought handle with thin decorative rings.

I wondered if that was supposed to indicate anything in particular, but in the end I decided not to pursue that thought. We were given little - well, sheaths, I supposed. Tooled leather straps with a narrow container for a wand, intended to be slipped over a limb. They resized themselves by magic, and when we left Ollivander's, I had mine strapped to the inside of my off-hand forearm. Draco had taken the more traditional route of affixing his to his hip, very like a sword belt.

"Excellent," said Lucius when we stepped back outside. I blinked in the sudden light. It was dimmer in the shop. "Is that it?"

Narcissa's brow furrowed. From apparently nowhere, she whipped out the list of things.

"Were we going to get an owl?" Draco asked, having apparently pre-empted her.

"Ah," said Narcissa. "Yes, that is on the list."

Lucius looked down at me. "Another day might be better," he said slowly.

"Father!" Draco said plaintively.

Narcissa's face was expressionless. "You'd like to return to the Alley again before term begins?" she asked mildly. She looked around at the enormous crowd of moving, seething people. I felt a bit disoriented just trying to focus on them.

"Well." Lucius faltered in the face of such a throng, and with such a huge number of sticky-fingered screaming children.

Here was where I probably should have offered to stay and go with them, but honestly I _really_ wanted to go home. I didn't much care about contacting them during term and I'd see them on holidays, so an owl was just another thing to feel responsible for, to me.

Draco seemed to feel very differently about the matter, though.

Narcissa came to a decision. "I'll take Draco to get his owl - you can return to the manor with Victoria. Not to offend you for the world, my dear, but you look really quite ill - and not just because you're still wearing green."

I decided that telling her that _I feel like death help_ was probably a little melodramatic. "No, I'd like that. That...yeah. Please?"

"Of course," she said.

"I'll see you upon your return," Lucius promised, and Narcissa leaned in and up to touch her mouth to his jaw briefly. It wasn't really a kiss, more a... polite gesture of romantic affection? I wasn't sure. It was a very We're Totally Married gesture and while it didn't make me uncomfortable, it was a little alien.

Draco's face rearranged itself into a faint grimace, like any display of affection between his parents was gross somehow.

(I kind of wished I found the idea of them together gross, because I was pretty sure good Malfoy ladies did _not_ have those thoughts about their mothers and fathers. Please don't let Draco grow up to be hot. _Please._ )

"Take my arm," Lucius instructed, and I did as I was told.

And then there was a _crack_ and everybody else was gone.

* * *

 **End of chapter notes on wands and stuff~!**

\- I had a scene planned where we finally learnt what Narcissa's wand was made of, but I swapped it out because I wanted the silly one with Lucius's rigid eighteen inch wand. Narcissa got some character development last chapter so I didn't feel too bad about it. Her wand was supposed to be 12", cedar wood, phoenix feather core, slightly bendy. Cedar wood is described on the hp wiki like this: "Ollivander said that he would go further than his father, however, in saying that he has never yet met the owner of a cedar wand whom he would care to cross, especially if harm is done to those of whom they are fond. The witch or wizard who is well-matched with cedar carries the potential to be a frightening adversary, which often comes as a shock to those who have thoughtlessly challenged them."

\- Lucius's wand is inherited, and elm is a wood that purebloods like because it's supposed to mean spellcasting with great precision and dignity; it's also supposed to mean that the spellcaster's spells rarely go wrong. I sincerely wonder what sort of wand he might have had, had he not inherited this one - what do you think?

\- The bendiness of a wand is supposed to indicate how "flexible" the character is! I didn't know this until I was looking it up on the hp wiki.

\- The beech wood wand is attributable to tumblr user ashlair who suggested it because of the pottermore description: "The true match for a beech wand will be, if young, wise beyond his or her years," which made me laugh.

\- I dithered a bit over whether Victoria should have a dragon heartstring or unicorn tail-hair wand (phoenix feather seemed like it might accidentally hint at a plot connection with Harry and/or Voldemort, which no), and eventually determined that for narrative reasons (i.e., more potential for something to go wrong), it would be more fun to have a dragon heartstring wand. Unicorn hair is meant to be very consistent and not very temperamental... and where's the fun in that? :0

* * *

Did you like anything about this chapter? Let me know.


	5. History

Lucius's Apparition was just as smooth as Narcissa's: a sucking, pressing black hole that dragged my senses down with an enormous _crack._ It echoed around us when we landed, and I still felt faintly nauseated by the whole experience. Given how it was described in the novels, though, 'faintly nauseated' was probably better than average.

The world around me was suddenly still and quiet. My eyes ached. I took a deep breath. "I'm so glad to be out of that place," I admitted.

"It's always like that before the first school term of the year," Lucius said quietly. "It's not bad sometimes in the winter months."

It felt pretty much like winter to me now, although I was aware enough to know that it was probably actually pretty mild for England. I had no idea how I was going to get by in a castle in Scotland during winter. It sounded... cold. Very cold.

With a gesture he led me back through the manor. The foyer we'd landed in was broad and floored with rosy marble, and the ceilings were high, vaulted and decorated with impressive chandeliers and decorative reliefs. I couldn't remember if I'd been here before.

We headed up a broad staircase, and then another, and then down one corridor that was huge and lined with portraits of blonds who inspected me curiously and murmured to each other, and then finally down a short winding stairwell and into another corridor.

"I have absolutely no idea where we are," I admitted. "I don't suppose you have a map of the manor?"

"Not quite. You'll have to learn, I'm afraid. Or - well, the elves know the manor, and the portraits can help. This is where we've put you for now."

The door opened at a wave of his hand. I felt pretty much determined that as long as there was a bed - or even a flat floor - I'd take it right now.

The first thing I noticed was the sheer stupid size of the place. It was big.

 _Really_ big.

There was a set of French doors on the other side of the space, and as far as I could tell they opened onto a balcony overlooking the manor's grounds. From the way it was arranged, I gathered that the room itself was intended to do double-duty as a sitting room of some kind, provided you were the sort of person who... you know, actually required your own sitting room.

I wasn't.

The whole room was significantly less overwrought than many of the other heavily baroque elements I'd seen of the manor - and although it was probably still a bit too fancy for my actual taste, it was by no means in _bad_ taste. There was at least no gold or terrifyingly elaborate moulds. Instead everything was in predominantly green, white, and varying dark woody shades. Furniture was carved wood, not gilt-edged and marble, and the walls were positively plain by the standards of the rest of the place.

There were only a few paintings, none of them featuring actual people, and the painting nearest me showed only a scene of a forest at night, moonlight filtering through dark leaves. As I watched a unicorn moved silently through the tall, slender trees. Huh. Pretty.

But the important thing: there was, to my endless relief, an actual bed tucked away in one corner - large, high and clean, with a pile of fluffy pillows and green accents on the white linens.

"If you dislike it there's certainly plenty of others, and it will only take the elves a moment or two to air them out," Lucius said, leaning against the doorframe. He eyed the space critically, like it might be somehow lacking,

"What? No. Not... no. This room is as big as my house," I said. I wasn't even being very hyperbolic. Maybe it was a _little_ smaller, but certainly not by any significant amount. Admittedly, it was a small house, but it was a _big room_.

Lucius's expression was best described as 'faintly pained'. He seemed to decide to ignore that comment completely, because the next thing he said was: "The things we purchased today will be delivered by the elves as soon as they've finished sorting between yours and Draco's. If you need anything, call for Slinky. There's another elf, but he can be..." a pause. "Call for Slinky," he said, without finishing the description.

That would be Dobby, I assumed.

Yeah, I didn't have a good description for him, either. Weird, weird little thing.

Still, I kind of wondered what would happen if I handed him a my clothes 'by accident' before anybody told me about that little bit of information. I could just... let him go do whatever he wanted as a free elf. I mean, I didn't have Hermione's dedication to fixing elf oppression or anything - not least because they weren't human, didn't have human culture and didn't, for the most part, seem to _want_ freedom - but I was pretty firm on the principle that People Who Want Freedom Should Have It...

On the other hand... probably best not to start out my life with the family by ridding them of their servants.

I nodded. "Slinky, got it."

Lucius patted my shoulder once and removed himself, closing the door behind him and leaving me in blissful silence in this large, well-lit room.

Another time I'd bask in that I really was pretty exhausted. Instead of inspecting anything or throwing open the balcony doors to coo at the pretty manor grounds, I stumbled over to the bed, kicked off my shoes and crawled on top of the covers.

Then I fell asleep.

My experience of sleep was, unfortunately, one of the few things about my life that hadn't changed in the past day. It would have been stupid of me to assume that it would be batter, but so many other things had changed - I could _eat gluten._ The opportunities before me seemed endless.

Apparently not.

I woke twenty minutes later, eyelids flickering, gritty-eyed and tired, and then I made a noise, rolled over and stared at nothing for a very long time before I went back to sleep.

Then I had my friendly recurring dream about being awake and helpless for my own autopsy, woke up again an hour later and contemplated getting up. I didn't, though, because everything was heavy and I felt like I couldn't move even if I'd wanted to. I counted the seconds between breaths, slow and measured, before I drifted off again some time later.

It was another nap later when I opened my eyes and determined that, yes, actually, night had fallen, and yes I was in the same bed and not being chased through an abandoned train station by a man with his face sliced off and blood on his hands.

There'd been something about a body in a toilet...?

Ugh. I stared up, not really looking at anything. It was dark enough in the room, but the moon was bright outside and it left a thin streak of paler light against my pale ceiling.

I tried to think of nothing - which I always sucked at - then tried focusing entirely on my breathing and committing to long, slow breaths, emphasis on the exhale. They were designed to slow the heart beat, relax a body and help with anxiety.

I got about a half hour of restless, unhelpfully fitful dozing in that way, but it was honestly more exhausting than just, you know, being awake.

I opened my eyes properly and sat up, deciding that there wasn't much point getting frustrated with myself about not being able to sleep. It rarely led to better rest, in my experience. The bed was extremely comfortable and the room was well-ventilated but not too cold. My sleeping was rarely restful... but it was how I slept, and there wasn't much else to it.

Possibly there were non-addictive options to medicate me to dreamland in the wizarding world. I'd look into that... eventually.

Some enterprising elf had left my school things upon the leather inlay of the desk - books stacked neatly, quills and parchment carefully lined up, cauldron beneath the table. Ingredients were stashed in their own case, along with a silver knife. The wand, of course, was still strapped to my arm.

There were wall sconces and candles spread around the room, and they lit as I crawled out of bed and walked past. The room's stone floors and white-green colour scheme should have made it feel cold, but between whatever charm was used for internal heating and the glow of the candles, everything felt soft and warm and beautiful.

Basically: I lived in a fairytale house full of pretty, pretty things.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't actually that materialistic, not really. I appreciated material things while they were there, but there was very little likelihood that I'd seek them out on my own. I had owned, at home, one very beautiful tea cup and a ring brought back from Myanmar by a family member - silver with malachite, and more prized for the pretty silverwork than its literal value.

It was nice to be here, though, where everything was comfortable and attractive.

On the other hand, I still wanted to check my emails. And to check wikipedia for the answers to like a dozen questions I now had.

Hmm. You win some, you lose some. I could eat gluten, and that was the main thing. I was looking forward to breakfast _so damn much_.

Still, it didn't look like it was that deep into the night. The stars outside were unfamiliar, but my body clock said it was only about one. There wouldn't be any more sleep today - at least not until hours had passed and I could convince my brain to take a nap - but there _were_ all these text books just sitting here...

I actually ended up pulling out the parchment and quills because god knew writing was going to be a helluva chore. I wondered if they'd let me use a nib pen. Surely that wouldn't be too modern and frightening for the wizards?

I'd have to ask.

But for now, it would be at least interesting to try using a quill.

Except then I pulled one out and it... wasn't really a quill. Oh, it had a feather on it, but that was about the extent of the relationship. It had a metal tip, which made it essentially a nib pen with a tiny ink reservoir, attached smoothly to the spine of a feather which then curled prettily back.

There was a bottle of ink - iron gall ink, with which I was familiar only because of a previous housemate who took a great deal of interest in calligraphy - and a series of different tips, all made of beautifully precise metal.

My fears for my handwriting didn't exactly vanish, but I have to admit I was relieved that I wouldn't be expected to be getting out the quill knife and sharpening my own. This, I could figure out with some practice.

Okay... a lot of practice.

My handwriting with a dip pen like this one was rubbish, but despite looking like a seven year old wrote it, I found that with effort I could make it legible rubbish.

I figured that if I went to the minor trouble of writing something daily then maybe none of the Hogwarts teachers would seriously despise me when school began. I tried to remember if my handwriting had been legible at twelve... but I couldn't, really. Fourteen years was a long time to remember how crappy my handwriting was.

I carefully arranged my parchment ( _parchment_ , seriously) and began to write: _the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog_.

And again.

Again.

I totally got bored after six painstaking repetitions. Writing for a reason was one thing, writing just for its own sake was just not very entertaining.

What on earth did people _do_ in the middle of the night without the Internet? Well, I mean, obviously some of them slept, but...

I glanced back at the books. Sure, I could read them, but the only one I really had the energy to concentrate on was probably _Fantastic Beasts_ \- which I felt guilty and a little anxious about because it seemed like probably the least relevant. I felt like I should do my best to get through _A History of Magic_ first, simply because it was likely to contain a lot of useful context and detail about the development of the community in which I must now live.

If there was no chance of that, I ought to at least pick up the potions or transfiguration texts because those units would be taught by the most crazy and pedantic teachers. In contemplation of the teachers I'd likely encounter, my eyes fell upon _The Dark Forces_ and I was struck by the sudden and completely awful thought that Voldemort was probably, right now, also thinking about attending Hogwarts come September. I... really wanted absolutely nothing to do with that mess. Nothing. Nada. Zero per cent willingness to be involved!

Well... I'd just try to stay out of that, then. If it was possible. If it was even going to happen the same way. It was impossible to tell. At the very least, though, I figured I could probably avoid any night time jaunts into the Forbidden Forest.

I'd had few _real_ hopes of returning to sleep any time soon anyway, but after contemplating Voldemort chilling out in all my Defence classes I wasn't even game to try. Instead I pulled _A History of Magic_ from the pile. Maybe I wouldn't be able to really concentrate on it as well as I wanted, but I could still take notes - and that would do double duty for improving my handwriting and giving me something to read over.

(Also, it wasn't like I could spend my sleepless hours reading pornographic fanfiction and internally wondering as to whether or not the Internet had ever heard of the male refractory period.)

Despite my reservations about concentration, Bathilda Bagshot was actually an unexpectedly engaging writer, even if I had some doubts as to the academic rigour of her work. There were some parts, especially with regard to intelligent non-humans, where I thought Ms Bagshot was letting her biases show through pretty fiercely. I wondered if there were books here in the manor against which I could check some of this stuff. Why was there no Google Scholar yet? Goddammit.

In the end, I wrote down the points that required some clarification and resolved to check these when I could. If nothing else, Bagshot's book definitely clarified that the Statute of Secrecy came before the Dewey Decimal System - which meant that I'd probably need to learn a new system. If wizards even used one. Ugh.

Still, the book was overly simplified and a little biased but completely fascinating. It was dawn before I knew it, and the sky was very nearly completely light when I'd finished the text.

How early did the Malfoys rise, anyway? I still felt more like a houseguest than anything else. It didn't feel quite right to wander without supervision or... permission... or something. It all felt very uncertain and temporary. I knew from experience in new households that I'd settle down eventually, but this kind of discomfort could take months for me to overcome.

I scrubbed my hands through my hair, which was of course a complete fright - my fingers got stuck before I reached the ends. And I hadn't bathed yesterday either, which, considering how much time I'd spent racing around like a headless chook and panicking was kind of gross. I could ask the portraits for directions to the relevant facilities, but they would probably not be able to find me a towel or a hair brush.

I glanced again at the steadily lightening sky and wondered if it would be rude to call upon an elf at whatever-o-clock. Was there etiquette for that? Did house elves even sleep the same hours as humans? I tugged thoughtfully at my hair and decided to at least clean up my parchment and ink and make the bed before bothering them. There was something a bit soothing about restoring the room to its tidiest state, even though I knew I was a tremendous mess day-to-day and I'd certainly break that habit as soon as possible.

Eventually, though, I had to suck it up and do it if I wanted to get help. "Um, Slinky?" I asked, feeling very stupid just talking to the walls. The unicorn in my painting glanced up at the sound of my voice.

There was the soft noise of displaced air and then the same ugly little creature from yesterday stood before me. She might have had some expression but her face was so differently formed that it was hard to tell what it actually was. "Miss?"

"Er," I mumbled, feeling very awkward. _Slave labour!_ blared my brain. I clenched my jaw because _yes, all right_ , but it just wasn't a useful concern right now. What was I meant to do, free her? And then what? Leave her unprotected and alone and homeless in a society that devalued and oppressed her people? I wasn't sure if house elves could end up arrested, but freeing them with no meaningful infrastructure in place to actually help them seemed like a good way to find out.

"Sorry to bother you so early," I said instead, ignoring my warring thoughts, "but do you think you could show me to a bathroom and help me find a towel and a hair brush?"

Slinky stared at me for a second with her luminous eyes. "Slinky isn't 'bothered', Miss," she said slowly. Then: "Follow."

So I did.

"Er," I said, once she'd helped me find the right room and provided the items I'd requested - and generally been silently helpful in a way that felt quite strange. "Thank you, Slinky."

And Slinky went sort of wild-eyed and purple in the face and then disappeared.

Well. Okay...

Was it rude to thank a house elf? Were they like fairies, in the old sense of the word? Except _fairies_ weren't even like fairies here. I didn't really understand but I wasn't about to call her back and demand an explanation. Instead I cleaned up and combed out my hair and pulled on one of the least decorative robes that had been sent ahead the day previous.

I felt strange and uncomfortable in my skin and far from belonging anywhere. In the absence of actual responsibilities I made my way back to my room and only got lost once, then collected my notes.

I asked a portrait of a lady - whose name, I learned, was Philomena - out in one of the corridors if she'd help me find the library. She was old in the portrait, although her face still bore traces of some seriously lovely bone structure, and she was oddly pleased to be interrupted and show me the way. I found out why when she wouldn't stop chattering about what she called 'your unique circumstances' as we went. I was apparently very much _the_ gossip among the manor's portraits, and they wanted to know more about me.

"Oh," I said.

"It's better to be remarked upon, child, than to be unremarkable," she assured me, apparently reading the uncertainty in my expression. I wasn't certain about that but she let me alone once we found the library so I didn't have to think of a response.

I decided she was all right, if a bit gossipy, and that I wasn't very interested in her.

The library was absolutely silent and it smelled divine.

It had wooden floors, covered with thick rugs, and enormous wooden book cases that lined the walls and stretched up to the high ceilings. There were smaller cases turned at angles for easy access, and there were books stacked in piles - oh, shelved carefully, left in a heap on two tables, exceptionally old ones kept in glass cases, an astonishing array of manuscripts and scrolls -

"Jesus fucking _wept_ ," I muttered.

It was well-lit, dusty, beautiful and overwhelming.

And none of the space had been organised in any semblance of a sensible system. Either I was tragically right about the Dewey Decimal System - in which case there should have been _at least_ an alphabetised system, because they'd been around for ages - or the Malfoys were among the most appalling curators on the planet.

There had to be _some_ kind of system. Nobody was stupid enough to just shove all the books - not _this many books_ \- into one room and never sort them or organise them, surely? There were so many of them, and people had clearly collected at least some as reference texts and archives, which meant they'd have to have planned to find them sometime...

At length, I found an enormous indexing tome, which gave me a list of all the books in the enormous room. It took me quite some time to figure out how the index was organised, and when I did I rolled my eyes so hard they very nearly popped out of my skull and tumbled across the rug.

The books listed in the index were organised by chronology. Not chronology of publishing or of writing or even of the lives of authors - oh, no. Next to every title was a date and a set of initials, which indicated when this particular Malfoy had added that title to the room.

They were organised in chronological order of their addition to the Malfoy library.

Of _course_ the Malfoys would use themselves as the only bloody reference point worth noting. Of course.

"How," I muttered. " _How even_. Oh my god." Oh my _god_. That was - it was -

I sank my face into my hands and let out a squeal of rage that sounded a little like a kettle boiling over.

I very nearly just turned around and walked out. How the _hell_ was I meant to find anything?

I glanced at my questions. They were pretty good questions. Back home, I would have just gone to the library website and used a series of search terms to narrow down the peer reviewed journals in which relevant articles had been written. Even the ones I didn't have access to would have provided interesting abstracts.

Here...

Here, it looked like I was stuck with an enormous and poorly organised library, and it was going to be pretty much the only way to look into anything I wanted to learn. Oh, sure, I could ask Narcissa or Lucius, but they weren't what you'd call unbiased.

I only hoped the Hogwarts library was less...

Stupid.

Less stupid.

Yep, that was the phrase.

The index did provide some explanation as to where each item was kept, and at the very least the dates in the book could tell me when certain things wouldn't have been covered - the Statute of Secrecy, for example, would have no references in the 15th century or earlier, which meant that I could ignore almost half of the huge list. Occasionally the writers who'd scrawled additions into the book had also left notes, but for the most part these were the past Malfoys more inclined toward practical pursuits - and just because they'd left notes didn't mean they made any sense to me. The unfortunate fact was that modern English was a pretty young language, all things considered. A lot - and I mean _a lot_ of the Malfoy line seemed to have written in Latin. There were titles in most European languages, young or old, but notations were pretty much entirely in Latin until we got to the 18th century.

That stood to reason, because if the Malfoy family really was descended from the victors of the Norman Conquest, there was a really good chance that the earliest of these ancestors hadn't had a written language to go with their spoken one, not really. Norman French was _written in Latin,_ because it didn't have a written form...

That fuzzy train of thought trailed off and disappeared because I was tired and a little frustrated by the mess. I spent a great deal of time squinting at the index, picking my way through the titles and noting those that I thought I could probably work my way through. There was a French-English translator's dictionary buried behind a 'concise' three volume history of the runespoor, which opened my options up a little more.

Some of the notes on the index made sense to me in a vague way - _liber est obscenum_ was practically Italian - _il_ _libro e osceno._ Yes, thanks, got it. "If it's so obscene, why did you get it?" I muttered to whichever past Malfoy had added the entry. (Of course I knew why they'd gotten it. The same reason I would have, surely.)

But, well. Obscenity. Mm-hmm. I decided I'd have to look that one up later. It might have meant 'foul' or 'vile' instead of 'obscene' in the sexy sense, but either way it would be awesome reading if it was in a language I could translate.

But among the easier notes were also ones I couldn't puzzle out. I didn't actually speak any foreign languages - just a smattering of bits and pieces picked up in the course of a lengthy lit degree. _Non perhibeo_ was a lot harder for me - was _perhibeo_ like _prohibeo_? To hold forth instead of to hold back? I rubbed my forehead and tried to think. A bad argument? Was that the medieval equivalent of '[citation needed]'?

Essentially: although the Malfoy library had, technically, some semblance of organisation, executing the business of finding the books I wanted was pretty much a nightmare.

Trawling through the indices of various singular books - which some of them, at least, had - and looking for keywords or whole chapters was very thankless work. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, there was an incredible sense of achievement when I actually found anything.

I took notes as I went, filling my parchment with messy scrawl. At this point, I was edging a little closer to teasing out some of the complexities of the human range of perspectives on the goblin wars. Having noted that, though, the victors always do get to say whatever they want about a conflict. I'd bet the goblins had their own records somewhere...

"You've missed breakfast," said a voice near my head, sometime later in the morning.

I squeaked in surprise and looked up.

"And..." Draco eyed me. "You've ink on your face."

I blinked. Then I tried to rub the part of my forehead he was looking at.

"Oh, good," he drawled, "now it's on more of your face."

I promptly gave up. Whatever. It wasn't like it was going to kill me. I waved my notes at him. "Do you speak Latin?"

"Father says he won't teach me a spell unless you're there too," Draco said, totally ignoring my question. "You need to come with me."

I frowned, and glanced back at the books I had spread out on one of the tables. "But -"

He grabbed my elbow. "Come _on_ ," he growled, and pulled me away. Draco let me go once he'd gotten both of us out of the library, but it didn't stop him from keeping an eye on me like he thought I might bolt.

"Wait," I said, several steps later. "Did you say I'd missed breakfast? Oh."

That was actually an enormous pity, because I'd been genuinely looking forward to it. _Bread_. Proper bread! Toasted. With butter and eggs. Um, _yes_.

"It's one in the afternoon. Yes, you missed breakfast." Draco gave me a look that suggested he thought I was a very dim indeed.

"...I lost track of time," I told him, and decided not to mention that I'd been up since well before dawn. So much for not being able to concentrate!

Draco snorted softly, derisively, and I rolled my eyes behind his back.

I paid very little attention to where we were going until a painting of what was indisputably Versailles caught my attention. It wasn't alive like a lot of the portraits, but it was done in a very realist style, and it definitely included movement.

I stopped to look for a second, peering at the palace grounds. It was difficult to pick the time period when the view had been painted because I didn't really understand the history of the place. However, it _was_ a muggle attraction - and seat of power. What did it imply if a witch had found the occasion to sit down and paint the-

"Victoria!" Draco hissed, snatching my arm again and pulling viciously. He was stronger than I, and moved me quite against my will. "Father's _waiting._ "

"And he'll still be alive when we get there," I snapped, using his thumb as the weak point in his grip to wrench my arm away. "Grab me like that again and I'll -" _rip your fucking balls off, you smug little shit_ was what almost came out.

I stilled.

Took a breath. No. I had to remember that even though he was slightly bigger than me, he was still _eleven_ , not twenty-something.

"You'll what?" he sneered, when I took too long to continue.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Complain relentlessly," I said instead. "Seriously, Draco, just... don't grab me like that. I hate it."

A pause.

"...Fine." He sniffed. "Can we go and see Father _now_?"

"Sure. Sorry, I got distracted." I gave one last, wistful glance at the painting, but followed his lead.

"That happens to you a lot," he muttered sourly.

"It really does."

He shot me a wary look, like my agreement was suspect in and of itself.

"What? It does. I don't mind. I like being distracted by interesting things."

That, if anything, made the expression worse.

"Don't you think maybe you should work on that?" he wondered loudly, crossing his arms. "Nobody likes waiting for you, you know."

I glowered at him. He was such a _brat_.


	6. Spellwork

I circumvented the urge to strangle my new, annoying baby brother. Somehow. That, in and of itself, was pretty much proof that I was magic.

We walked together until we came to one of the parlours - a sitting room, more relaxed than some of them, with delicate furniture in shades of cream and brown and a tea setting already out upon a low, polished tabletop.

"There you are," said Narcissa, smiling benignly over her cup at me. Her robes were pale rose, informal, and her hair was down, falling thick and woolen over her shoulders. _So pretty_. "Here, allow me -" and she leaned forward for the pot.

Oh, hey, _tea_.

I accepted it. "Thank you."

"You have ink on your face..." she paused, then flicked her wand at me. I flinched, but all that happened was a soft burn on my forehead, like I'd rubbed some kind of menthol product there. Huh. Was that what a cleaning spell felt like?

"You missed breakfast," said Lucius, briefly ignoring the way Draco seemed to be bouncing upon his toes.

"I... got distracted," I said. "Sorry. I hope you didn't wait for me?"

" _Father_ ," and, okay, Draco's voice was actually a _whine_ now.

Were eleven year olds meant to do that? I felt like that was a thing that people did when they were much younger? I frowned at him curiously.

"Breakfast is never very formal," Narcissa assured me. "We don't stand on ceremony. I expect you to be present at dinner, however," she added. There was nothing forceful in her voice, but we both knew she'd get her way. She didn't need to sound authoritative.

"Sure," I agreed easily. It wasn't like I'd _intended_ to miss my delicious gluteny breakfast. I'd just been distracted.

Narcissa's smile was like the rising sun. "What have you been doing all morning?" she asked, gesturing me into a seat with cream upholstery and a green rug of some soft, incredibly fine fabric tossed over its back.

I took it carefully, because I knew I had at least one smear of ink on my fingers. Think about that reminded me that I was still holding my crumpled notes - I'd had them when Draco came into the library and they were still in my hand now. "Learning how to write with a dip pen, mostly," I sighed, eyeing my handwriting.

Narcissa took the parchment gently. "Ah," she said, upon viewing it. "Did you use - charcoal, or pencils? It's legible, at least," she added encouragingly, although her expression was one of obvious distaste.

I wondered if I should try to explain a computer to Narcissa Malfoy, and decided against it. "Not quite. We had... pens with tiny balls in the nibs, which roll when you push the pen across a page. They collect ink from a reservoir inside the pen, and in rolling they deliver an even amount of ink to the page." I paused, reviewing the statement and hoping it made sense.

Was that even how ball points worked? Whatever. Narcissa would never know.

"It's why there's so much weird variation in the thickness," I added, scrunching my nose a little.

"That's..."

"Finally!" Draco exclaimed somewhere to my left. Both of us turned - oh, but Lucius was allowing himself to be dragged off somewhere, sharing a brief but fond glance with Narcissa as he was herded out the door.

I blinked. "He seems excited."

"We discussed it, and it seems better to both of us that you learn a few simple spells under supervision than that you experiment on your own. I know the lure of a new wand is strong," she smiled gently.

"Oh..." I'd pretty much begun to ignore the wand strapped to my arm. I knew it was there, but I hadn't given it much thought: took it off to shower, tied it back on, went to the library. "To be honest," I admitted, "I'd kind of forgotten about it. I was distracted by the library."

"So I see," she sighed, putting the parchment down. "Your hands are filthy. Perhaps the first spell I teach you ought to be one for cleaning..." She tutted quietly over my hands for a second but in the end she drew her own wand again and flicked it at my fingers to remove the ink.

"Oh, um," I said, remembering a thought I'd had earlier. "Is there one for keeping warm? I only just realised it was kind of summer here? This is pretty much what winter in Australia feels like - summer is, like, forty degrees centigrade half the time."

Her eyebrows rose. "That is surprisingly practical," she allowed. "Very well - a cleaning spell and a warming spell. Both are simple charms, and shouldn't cause much difficulty. You may pick a third, if you like."

I hesitated, although the ones on my lips were 'disarming' and 'petrification'. Either seemed handy for day to day life in the Hogwarts corridors. On the other hand... "Is there such a thing as a translation charm?"

"A translation charm? To translate between languages? Yes, there is," said Narcissa slowly, "but it affects the mind, so I don't think it would be a good idea to teach it to you until you have more practice at simple charms."

"The library," I said sheepishly when she looked a little confused. "So much of it's in French and Latin, and I don't really speak either."

"Ah," she said with a knowing smile. "Yes. The library."

I frowned. "...yes?"

Her smile only widened, now slightly mischievous. "I have a bet with Lucius, as it happens - he insists you'll be Sorted into Slytherin, but I'm already certain you will be a Ravenclaw."

When I'd had the inevitable 'which house are you?' discussion with people in the past, I'd actually wanted to be a Hufflepuff, honestly - I thought they sounded like the nicest and easiest House to get along with, and it seemed like they'd probably be the kinds of people to respect firmly-set boundaries.

Unfortunately, I was _very much_ afraid of toil, and not terribly just, either.

No Hufflepuff for me, sadly.

Still, I wondered what on earth Lucius thought would see me Sorted into Slytherin.

I was utterly without ambition (evident ambition to _eat my bodyweight in bread_ aside), and the only reason I was ever efficient or results-focused was because I was _lazy._ On the other hand, I had just spent most of the night and the entire morning tearing through history books because Bagshot's seemed too simplistic, so...

I thought Narcissa was pretty much on the money, basically. Learning stuff for the satisfaction of knowing it and pulling apart others' arguments were basically what I'd done with my post-highschool life, anyway: it's not like anybody got a degree in _literature and criminology_ because she wanted a _job._

"Draco did say that the whole family had been in Slytherin," I said. "Does it matter much? It seems like there's some significance, but in my experience school houses are just a convenient way to divide students into manageable groups?"

Narcissa laughed. "Oh, dear," she said. "Maybe we should discuss that before we move onto spellwork - we can't send you to Hogwarts not knowing."

What followed was an enlightening, if highly biased, perspective on how the Hogwarts Houses truly broke down. By the end of it, I felt a little sorry for the Hufflepuffs, who were presumed to be invested in fair play only because such talentless children couldn't excel without it - which rather missed the point, I thought.

Narcissa was quite obviously Slytherin to the core, though. I kept my mouth shut and didn't try to interrupt, although I was dying to ask her if she knew how biased she was.

Discussing Hogwarts Houses, however, seemed only to prompt Narcissa to realise how very much I (presumably) didn't know: "Oh, dear. You'll also need to know the major families... I'm going to have to ask you to read the Pure-Blood Directory. It's fine not to know the minor families, but you can't be seen not knowing the Sacred Twenty-Eight..." Here she paused again. "We're going to have to go through the genealogies, too... you must know who you're related to..."

I contemplated it for a second. I probably knew more of the information than Narcissa assumed, but I genuinely did not know how I was related to the other characters, and that sounded _fascinating_. And also necessary. I probably had, like, second cousins and stuff, and I could just imagine Narcissa and Lucius having to deal with reports of me snubbing them...

At least I should _know_ if I was insulting somebody I was related to.

"Do you want to do that first?" I offered, resigning myself to it.

She blinked, surprised, and then smiled. "I keep forgetting that you're not really as young as Draco," she admitted. "It's... occasionally difficult to have him attend to his lessons."

So my afternoon was derailed and I found myself settled in that parlour to read the very, _very_ boring Pure-Blood Directory while Narcissa attended to her own correspondence. She was generally quiet company, which I appreciated, and only interrupted my reading when one of her acquaintances had enquired about me... which was apparently every three or so letters.

"It's because you're one of us, dear," Narcissa explained with a comfortable stretch, lazy and contented like a happy cat. "Most of our acquaintances were aware we had a second - or, rather, a first - child when you were born, but there was some confusion as to what had actually happened to you. Travelling through dimensions the way Marlow does is illegal."

"...Oh," I said slowly.

"Most of our acquaintanceship believes that you've been on the continent, although I don't doubt that several people did believe you were dead..." She glanced up at me again, "I'm telling them you were in Australia, which will also account for your accent and manners, and which you may use to cover any gaps in your knowledge."

I didn't bother to protest. It wasn't such a bad plan, after all. Besides, my accent was _really obvious_. Nobody was going to believe I'd picked it up in Europe.

"So, this... er, this 'pure blood' thing," I said carefully instead, and Narcissa looked up attentively, "it's like, hm, aristocracy?"

"A little," she said, setting her letters aside. "Although aristocracy is a fickle thing, conferred by conquest and silly politicians and just as easily taken away. Your blood cannot be taken from you."

I thought of names blasted off a tapestry, but I nodded.

What followed was a crash-course in What It Means To Be A Pure Blood Witch, which was just as alarming as it sounded. Worse, coming from Narcissa, almost any pronouncement sounded like the very model of sweet reason. She spoke like it was completely impossible for an intelligent witch to believe otherwise.

Despite the impression I'd received from the novels, there was actually no truly cohesive perspective, but there were general principles - most of which stemmed from an iron-clad belief that muggles were simultaneously dangerous and beneath recognition.

The disparity of opinion explained the general tone of the Pure-Blood Directory, which mentioned several families who didn't quite make it into the Sacred Twenty-Eight - which was to say that at some point in the past two centuries, somebody in these lesser families had married a half-blood.

Yeah.

Tough crowd, apparently.

The political views gave me a headache and made me feel like my IQ was leaking out from my fucking eyeballs, but at least I got through the Directory. When Narcissa questioned me to make sure I'd knew the material, I was damn invested in explaining perfectly what I'd understood - I never wanted to read the stupid thing again.

"Of course, the Directory is a very... _conservative_ viewpoint," Narcissa said delicately when she was satisfied that I knew enough to be going on with. "It's generally accepted that a witch with four magical grandparents is a pure blood, although of course her lineage would never match yours. You're a scion of the Black and Malfoy families, both lengthy and respected lines. There is nobody - _nobody_ \- you might encounter with a stronger blood line than ours."

I nodded numbly.

Narcissa took the opportunity to reach forward and tuck one loose curl behind my ear. I kept stone-still while she touched me.

"You've picked it up very quickly," she informed me, which, well, of course I had: I'd read the novels. It was the primary political conflict in them. But it must have looked to Narcissa as though I'd learned - and _understood_ \- a lot of the doctrine in one afternoon.

"It's kind of dry."

She smiled. "That it is. His writing is one of the reasons the Pure-Blood Directory has been attributed to Cantankerus Nott - he's quite the scholar, but a dreadful bore. Now, I know we must look at the genealogies but they're rather more laborious - if more interesting - and I expect you're a bit wrung out..."

Genealogies, good god. I could not _possibly_ have cared less about the genealogies, and it wouldn't have been hard to be more interesting than the Directory. _Watching grass grow_ was more interesting than the fucking Directory.

Luckily for me, Narcissa took pity upon her student and tried, with... mixed success... to teach me how to cast a warming charm.

The incantation was _calefactorus._ "Oh, like _calore_ or _caldo -_ or _scald_ , right?"

"Definitely Ravenclaw," said Narcissa. She sounded almost... happy.

I paused and squinted at her. "...What do you get if you win?"

She smiled but did not tell me.

I was no longer sure I wanted to know. "Right," I muttered, and returned to my warming charm.

Following instructions was easy enough: the pronunciation was all right, the wand movements were simple, but the charm itself was...

"You have to _want_ it to warm you," Narcissa told me, frowning thoughtfully. Then, "Make sure you're focusing on the target - if you're thinking about the tip of the wand, then you're just as likely to warm the wood and nothing else."

"Okay," I said slowly. It made sense that magic was more art than science - it was, after all, _magic_. I tried again, producing the oddly precise wand flick that she'd demonstrated and murmuring: " _Calefactoru- EEK!_ "

A gout of flame whooshed up my arm, filling the room with the smell of burning hair. It was gone as quickly as it had arrived, but my heart was racing a mile a minute.

It was all I could do not to hurl my wand across the room. "Holy buggering fuck."

"Victoria, language, please," she said, eyes following the smoke as it drifted upwards.

"Um," I managed, pressing my off-hand to my heart. "I set myself on fire."

"Yes," Narcissa agreed. "But your eyebrows are still there and you _did_ create warmth. I'd say that's an excellent attempt. Now. Again!"

I stared at her.

She was a _madwoman_.

"Well? You'll never learn if you won't take the trouble to practice."

"I..."

Her eyebrows rose.

"Yes, ma'am," I mumbled.

I set myself on fire three more times before I managed a single successful warming charm, and Narcissa evidently ascribed to the view that lessons should be ended on a high note to encourage enthusiasm, because she allowed me to stop then.

"Your progress is more than reasonable," she assured me, although I noticed that _she_ didn't smell of burnt hair.

At an rate, after our lessons had left me feeling completely wrung out, she swiftly herded me out to the gardens, pointing out that I had to get some fresh air sometime. (I disagreed. The air was plenty fresh in the library, but Narcissa was not a woman to whom you casually said 'no'.)

Despite my general impression of Malfoy Manor as a place that was carefully manicured and curated, the gardens were distinctly... wizardy. They were huge and sprawling and the paths through them were gravelled over, neat and pale. But outside those paths...

There were strange bushes and shrubs, leaves that shivered under my gaze, long woody stems that rustled restlessly when I turned my back. There were summer flowers that bloomed huge and beautiful, including one that would only unfurl its petals when nobody was watching it. There was a tree that smelled like death to attract insects and a little vine with dangerous thorns that crept up upon people to drink from their veins.

There was a bowtruckle in an apple tree, which Narcissa pointed out to me. It took me several long minutes to pick it out - a little like a humanoid stick insect, well-camouflaged, and only the size of my hand. It ignored us completely, digging into the wood with its long claws.

There was a family of feral kneazles, which looked basically nothing like I'd expected - they were big creatures with huge caracal ears and long sleek tails ending in tufts.

A vine-covered folly stood some distance from the path we walked, and beneath a ruined stone overhang were six leggy adolescents and a huge, purring dam who watched us with bright, critical eyes.

"You must be careful," Narcissa cautioned. "They can be very aggressive if they take a dislike to you."

I wasn't about to rush up to them or anything, but one of the younger ones was stretching out its paws, pads on display and long needlelike claws extending into the air. It rolled while I watched, baring a creamy spotted belly, and tumbled away from its siblings - right up until the huge mama kneazle sprang to her paws and dragged it back in her powerful jaws.

"Oh," I said helplessly.

Narcissa covered her smile with one hand, but there was a soft hum of laughter.

"Don't make fun of me," I said, knocking one shoulder gently against her. "They're the cutest things I've seen since I got here. Look at those tiny little toe beans." I made a soft happy noise.

This did not make her laughter abate. "Oh, dear. Perhaps we should have gotten you a cat when we purchased Draco's owl."

I glanced at her, finally tearing my eyes from the kneazles, and shrugged uncomfortably. "I'd have to take care of it," I pointed out. "Half the time I'm barely qualified to take care of myself."

This comment evidently made Narcissa recall that I had missed breakfast. "You haven't eaten lunch, either, have you? Merlin, you must think we're terrible parents. Let's get you inside and-"

I sighed. "Don't do that," I said, cutting her off. She looked affronted for a second, but hid it well. "I am actually old enough to remember to feed myself. It's not really your responsibility."

She hesitated. "You didn't, though."

"I'm easily distracted. It doesn't mean I'm a child."

Her forehead creased, and she looked me up and down. "I'm aware of that... intellectually," she said.

I nodded. "It's fine, I just..."

"Yes," she agreed after another awkward hesitation. "It must frustrate you."

"Well, it's not so bad, letting other people worry about everything," I admitted with a half-smile. "But I'm not..." I paused. "If you abandoned me tomorrow, I'd survive it. I'd figure something out. I'm old enough to take care of myself." Well, maybe not in the wizarding world, but I'd certainly be able to deal with the muggle world of the 90s. I'd get by. I'd be _pissed off_ , but I'd get by.

She sighed. "You must understand that it's instinct to take care of you," she said, reaching yet again for my hair. I was pretty much resigned to her touching and stiffly allowed it.

"I get it," I agreed, "but I don't want you to forget, either."

It took her a moment, but Narcissa nodded finally.

There was a moment where I reflected that I could have ended up with much less tolerable people, politics aside.

A streak of vile invective - and I mean _vile_ , and this is coming from somebody who wears 'motherfucker' tee shirts to bed - rent the air. A foot-tall figure dashed squealing across the path followed by a big furred body and a long ratlike tail.

"Jarvey," said Narcissa, glancing at my bewildered face. "It's almost impossible to keep gnomes out of a garden this size, and they ruin everything with their burrowing."

I blinked at her, and then there was a cry and a sick, wet _crunch_. I looked back. I probably shouldn't have.

Jarveys apparently had very powerful jaws, and evidently gnome was a favourite food. I'd seen animals killed for meat before, but gnomes were very...

"Victoria?"

"Sorry," I said automatically. "I - it's just so damn human looking." Gnomes looked like small, potato-faced humans. And they had human-sounding voices.

Narcissa's expression softened. "Such a gentle thing you are. No, don't fret, they're truly beasts. They're so stupid that the killing of one brings the others running to see what happened. Watch - see?"

I did see, unfortunately. The jarvey swore and bellowed gleefully, ripping into each gnome that came - stupidly, it was true - into biting distance.

"Is the jarvey clever? It talks," I pointed out.

"Mmm," Narcissa made an uncertain gesture with one hand. "Difficult to say. They're certainly cleverer than a gnome, but the kneazles run circles around them. We have three on the grounds, mostly for controlling the gnome population."

I wondered if Narcissa would say that muggles were stupid too, stupid like gnomes - I thought about people stopping with their phones up, hoping to tweet a picture of calamity. I could see her argument now. It made me... uneasy. Or maybe that was the distressed screams of the gnomes. They did sound _very_ human.

However, what Narcissa had said gelled with what I already knew of gnomes from the novels, so I put the violent scene from my mind - relegated it to a disturbing but passing spectacle.

That feeling honestly set the tone for that August with the Malfoys: fascination and excitement tempered with the occasional, jarring recognition of their cruelty - except I couldn't quite call it cruelty in all cases. Cruelty was by nature malicious, and as far as I could tell, Narcissa, at least, hadn't a truly malicious bone in her body. There was no joy in it, no sadism or schadenfreude.

She was just horribly, terrifyingly...

Practical.

She valued certainty and expedience over kindness, and she seemed to feel that any reservations I showed about causing pain to another person were brought about by a sort of feminine gentility, an inborn abhorrence of unnecessary cruelty that she found somehow charming.

It was... strange. Never in my life had I been 'the soft one' in a group of people before. It wasn't in my character. For decades I'd been told I was emotionally shallow, hard-hearted and devoid of empathy, too cold to care about anybody but myself - but that was in _my_ reality.

Here... that was pretty much par for course among the Malfoy family. They were all like that with outsiders, and additionally none of them had any concerns whatsoever about causing pain or harm to outsiders.

Narcissa may have been practical, but she got on swimmingly with her husband and son. And, look, Draco was the only one for whom insensitivity and shit-stirring was a fucking _hobby_ , but Lucius?

That man was _mean._

He made me nervous.

If presented with two options of equal value, where I would pick the least hurtful because _why hurt somebody if there's nothing in it for you,_ Lucius would pick the one that would cause most pain or damage to pretty much anybody else.

Because there _was_ , somehow, somewhere, something in it for him.

He revelled in it.

I assumed it was an expression of authority of some kind - proving to himself that he could hurt people when he wanted, proving his control for the sake of it.

It was very like his brief confrontation with the Weasleys Malkin's shop - he could have ignored them completely if he didn't think he could keep his mouth shut, but he chose to be mean, chose to strike where he suspected it would hurt most.

"I saw Persephone Parkinson and James Macmillan together," Narcissa said, peering through her letters over a late breakfast while I devoured my third slice of toast.

"Together?" Lucius's eyebrows rose.

" _Together_ ," she emphasised.

"A married man, my goodness," drawled Lucius.

"Mm-hmm."

Gossip told, Narcissa settled back - and it was Lucius who went out of his way to put words in the right ears, and it was Lucius who smiled grimly at the society pages when they announced a marital separation.

There was a look on his face like he didn't even enjoy it, not really - just a satisfaction, a calm settled feeling, vindicated and easy.

It was all very... it felt like a very muted cycle-of-violence kind of thing, and it made me wonder a little about his history. What had his parents been like? He was too rich, too pure blooded, too male to be the focus of certain problems, but -

And then I stopped wondering, because he practically had 'Property of Voldemort' branded upon his arm, and _of course it felt like cycle-of-violence stuff_. It was... well, it was cycle-of-violence lite.

I hated it.

It made me wary, sped my heart and flushed my face. Minute reminders set alarms ringing in my head. I felt like any second he could turn that lazy, self-satisfied cruelty upon me. I wasn't worried about social ruin - I was his daughter and I couldn't see it, and I didn't care about him enough to feel beholden to his approval.

But actual violence, that scared me.

That... scared me a lot.

He never hurt me, but sometimes I expected it, and sometimes when he turned his gaze upon me I flinched. I could see it bothered him, I could read his confusion in his furrowed brow, but he didn't ask and I didn't bring it up.

This, unfortunately, was one of the many problems with getting to know people. In my case it was just unfortunate that my father was an unmitigated asshole to other people. He was never unkind to us, not really - he was indulgent and careful with his children, like we were precious and breakable. Maybe _too_ indulgent, actually, because he seemed determined to teach Draco to be a spoilt little shit by acquiescing to his every whim, telling him he was special and reinforcing that just by existing as a Malfoy he was somehow superior to other people.

It was sort of sweet how much Lucius doted on him, but... yeah. It was obviously setting him up for a hell of a difficult adulthood. It would one day hurt to learn that the whole world didn't revolve around Draco Bloody Malfoy, I was sure of it.

Still, I was glad that Lucius took such an interest in Draco - it meant that I rarely saw him without a buffer of either Draco or Narcissa or both, and that worked well for me.

Slowly, early August bled into mid August and became late August, and then somehow it was only days away from leaving for Hogwarts and I was _freaking the fuck out_.

"I'm going to have to pretend to be twelve," I fretted to Narcissa one night after Draco had gone to bed. Oddly, he never protested going to bed - he liked sleeping, as far as I could tell.

"You'll be one among many," she soothed. "And you're there to learn magic, which you can do at any age. Any cultural differences can be blamed on an upbringing in the southern hemisphere."

I gnawed my lower lip. "I don't _like_ children," I worried. "I didn't even like children _when I was a child_. How am I supposed to live in a dorm room?"

"Jinxes," Lucius opined, from where he was peering at the _Evening Prophet_ in a corner of the room. "Good ones."

"I don't know any," I muttered.

To be honest, as much as I'd enjoyed the theoretical side of the work, magic was... kind of hard. I'd gotten the cleaning charm down, but the warming charm was unreliable. The third one I'd picked after Narcissa had declared translation charms too advanced was _reparo,_ because it seemed all seemed useful, but...

Well. I wasn't exactly a natural, although Narcissa assured me I wasn't picking it up any slower than anybody else. "Not everybody's a natural at every discipline," she'd assured me. I was pretty sure I was not going to be a natural at _any_ discipline, but at least the theoretical work was coming easily.

"None?" Lucius asked, raising his eyebrows. "You didn't think to teach her even one?"

Narcissa shrugged. "Victoria wasn't concerned with them, and..." she paused. "I doubt she has the temperament for them, really."

"She'll have the temperament for them once she's in an enclosed space with five or ten eleven year old Slytherin girls," Lucius pointed out, earning a dark look from Narcissa.

That... was probably true, actually. I was still pretty sure that I wouldn't be in Slytherin, but children were basically awful no matter what. He probably had a point.

"There's no need to use a jinx, you know," Lucius said with his eyes fixed on my face as I contemplated it. "But surely it's better to know at least one or two... just in case."

I wavered. It kind of _was_ true, I supposed... "Well..."

I looked over at him. Lucius's smile was narrow, inviting and a little bit wicked. Cheerfully, he folded his paper.

Narcissa just sighed.

I was braced to negotiate my way down from learning something absolutely awful to learning something mildly inconveniencing, but Lucius actually had more restraint than I'd given him credit for.

"They're children," he said, raising his eyebrows.

"Oh." I thought about Ginny Weasley and wondered how much that mattered, really.

A hurling hex, as it was called, could be applied to objects or surfaces and left until somebody touched it - at which point it would blast them away from that point. "It's classed as a hex but it's only really dangerous if you're foolish enough to use it on a precarious stairwell or a broomstick or - well, all right," Lucius allowed, "it could be quite dangerous in a great many circumstances. But it doesn't _have_ to be."

I nodded slowly. It made sense. I could also think of places it would be really handy to know something like that - you could lay that kind of hex on a trunk you were trying to keep prying fingers out of, or in front of a door where nobody had any business being... really, there were plenty of applications.

The incantation was _iacio_ , and instead of a careful wand movement, it relied upon a tap and an 'effort of willpower', whatever that meant. I frowned thoughtfully at my wand.

"Try here," Lucius pointed at a couch cushion - and Narcissa got up and moved away, perhaps wisely. My failures tended to be... big. Explosive. _Fiery_.

"All right," I said. I'd said it flippantly to Draco, but I wasn't really easily distracted - I was easily _bored_. Willpower was basically like stubbornness, and that I was pretty sure I had. I made an effort to focus my attention. Hurling hex. I could do that.

I tapped the cushion. " _Iacio_."

It shivered under the touch of my wand, but otherwise nothing happened. It didn't even catch on fire. I frowned. Maybe Narcissa was right and I really didn't have the right mindset for hexes.

"Well," said Lucius, sounding a lot more certain than I was, "Let's test it." He reached over his chair and grabbed a new-ish looking paperback. Lightly, he tossed it to the cushion.

BANG! went the cushion, and I yelped and flinched back as, with a little flash, the book was thrown vertically and slammed into the ceiling. When it fell again, the plaster was chipped.

"...Is it supposed to be like that?" Because if it was then Lucius's assessment that it didn't _have_ to be dangerous was way, way off base. That was definitely dangerous. If that had been a person, they'd have broken something.

"Less power, more finesse," Narcissa advised, but she still looked pleased, if surprised, by my results. "But it was an excellent first try."

"It was," said Lucius, sounding slightly puzzled. "It's a lovely strong variation of the hex. Were you thinking of anything in particular when you cast it?"

"Well," I said, "er, hurling things?"

"Yes," Narcissa interrupted, "but what does that mean to you? What are its implications? What associations do you have with the word - reminders, memories?"

I frowned. What did I think of? Well, being hurled from horseback, mostly. I'd had a couple of bad falls when I was younger and used to ride regularly - and more than a couple of temperamental riding school horses. In hindsight, I felt kind of sorry for those creatures.

"Oh, you ride." Narcissa sounded delighted once I'd explained. "That's a proper pastime for a young witch. Although perhaps not so much the, er, _falling off_."

"Everyone falls off sometimes," I said, feeling a wee bit defensive. 0

Lucius waved this aside and brought us back to the point. "Being thrown from a running horse would certainly explain the strength of the hex. Try instead thinking of something slightly gentler this time."

After that, learning the hurling hex was surprisingly, well, easy. I didn't even set anything on fire.

Despite his willingness to help me avoid spells that would accidentally murder other students, there was no denying how pleased Lucius was. I was _good_ at hexes. Far better than I was at the regular charms Narcissa had been trying to teach me.

"Why?" I asked her once, while she was painstakingly taking me through the warming charm again. I still set everything on fire half the time, unfortunately. "I mean, technically a hex is a charm, right?"

She lowered her wand, which had been readied to cast a shield in case everything went pear-shaped again. "Yes, and no. Hexes, jinxes and curses are by and large charms, that's true. But they're not the same kinds of charms. Their intention is quite different."

I frowned harder. "What does that mean?"

She rubbed the bridge of her nose for a second. "I... fear you'll make too big an issue of it."

"...huh?"

"Full sentences, Victoria."

It was a hard-fought battle to avoid rolling my eyes. "I don't understand."

She sighed gently. Prettily. Because almost everything Narcissa did was done prettily. "You're only average at standard charms, my dear, but you're an absolute natural at dark magic."

I stopped.

Was I?

Jinxes and hexes and curses _were_ all forms of dark magic of varying seriousness, but I hadn't... I mean, they were also mostly just charms. Did that mean that there was a part of me that sincerely wanted to hurt people?

I thought about that for a second.

There probably was, actually, but it wasn't a large part. Maybe it didn't have to be?

"Okay," I said slowly. "But..."

Another sigh. "There's more to dark magic than wanting to cause suffering," Narcissa took a dainty step forward and touched my shoulder. "There's a mental element that's quite different from common charms."

I looked dubiously at her.

Her cool fingers moved from my shoulder to my jaw, delicate and light. "This is why I wasn't sure if I should tell you. Just - put it out of your head, dear, and focus on the charm."

That seemed like the wisest course for the moment, so I just... did that.

Knowing that I was 'a natural' at dark magic didn't really change things - except in the ways it did. In those last few days of August, Lucius began to seek me out more and more. He was no less dedicated to his son, of course, but once Draco had sensibly gone to bed he came to find me.

Most nights, I'd finished working on whatever Narcissa demanded I learn - mostly pure blood etiquette, the stars of the northern hemisphere or genealogies, interspersed with discussions about Hogwarts and general witchy knowledge - and could be found in the library.

On the odd occasion when I was actually in the bedroom I'd been given, Lucius hovered awkwardly in the doorway as though unsure of his welcome. It was... oddly endearing, this hesitation to violate my privacy and encroach upon my space. But when I saw him there, waiting, hesitating after a knock, I never could quite chase away the sense of danger - this was a man who hurt people, and I felt the anxiety of it, low and coiling like a snake in my guts.

Intellectually I knew he wouldn't hurt me. Intellectually I was fairly - not completely, but _fairly_ \- certain he didn't have it in him to harm his own family. People, in my experience, usually saved the best or the worst of themselves for their families, with no in between, and it seemed like Lucius was one of the former... But still I made a point of not inviting him further in. If he wanted to talk, I'd come out and speak with him. I wanted to feel safe in my own space.

I did not point it out to him. If he felt slighted by it, I didn't notice. He never brought it up.

The library was still hideously organised, but increasingly I was getting used to the mess. I was even beginning to learn something of the previous Malfoys' tastes, since I had to look at their names or initials every time I located a book. Most of the time I could be found up at all sorts of odd hours, looking something up from my school texts in more depth (I had to be really interested or really confused to do this. Looking anything up in the Malfoy library with an actual purpose? Hellish!) or reading whatever interesting text came to hand. Occasionally I even found something I knew in the stacks.

Lucius made a habit of appearing in silence and usually managed to sneak up and scare the stuffing out of me, even when he didn't intend to.

"This is really appallingly written," I declared irritably on the single occasion I actually noticed his entry. "I've looked for the French but either you've only got the translation or I can't find it in this mess. This is the eighteenth century, can you even _use_ fuck as a noun?"

"What on _earth_ are you reading?" Lucius demanded, speeding his steps and peering over my shoulder in alarm.

I shrugged and angled the text so he could see it.

"... ' _"Excellent idea! Quickly, quickly, fetch me needle and thread!... Spread your thighs, Mamma, so I can stitch you together -so that you'll give me no more little brothers and sisters." Madame de Saint-Ange gives Eugenie a large needle, through whose eye is threaded a heady red waxed thread; Eugenie sews.'_ " Lucius paused. "I... Victoria, I still don't know what you're reading - or if you should be reading it. Or if _I_ should be reading it."

" _Philosophy in the Bedroom's_ a classic."

"A classic _what_?" he wondered.

I frowned. "The Marquis de Sade straddles the fence between pornography and political discussion. Primarily I think he was trying to use shock value to draw more attention to his philosophy? Which was a pretty dumb one, really. He's a moron and an asshole and tremendously sexist and kind of gross," I admitted, closing the slim text and leaning back in my chair, "but there's no other earthly reason to combine lengthy sociopolitical argument with this kind of -" I waved the book and made a noise that was only a little expressive.

"I... see," said Lucius, in a tone that indicated that he absolutely did not.

"If you've ever read _120 Days_ , you're pretty much numb to the sexual sadism by the time you get to the middle- _mpphlhng_?"

"Victoria," said Lucius, sounding pained, and certainly without removing the hand he'd put over my mouth. "Please stop _._ "

His hand was warm, dry, and smelled of soap and the cedarwood kept in his clothes chest. All of these were good things, provided I had to have somebody's hand slapped over my mouth. My heart wouldn't stop racing, and I had to fight the urge to rip his fingers away from my face.

I breathed a shaky breath through my nose and glowered at him. "Mph?"

Cautiously, Lucius withdrew his hand.

I edged away from him. Then: "Ew." I rubbed my mouth.

He opened his mouth, closed it again, glanced at the book, and then looked at me. He opened his mouth again.

"...do you want to learn how to curse a man with impotence?" he asked finally.

I glanced at the book and wondered if that was what he'd come here intending to ask, or if he'd changed his mind at the last second. Still... impotence was a hell of a curse for a pure blood. They were _obsessed_ with family lines.

It would be a pretty mean curse to enact upon someone, but kind of fascinating nonetheless.

I hesitated. "...how permanently?"

"It's a known curse. Any competent healer can fix it. Provided the person cursed sees a healer," he added.

I'd have bet that they wouldn't go to see a healer for a fairly long time - but reversible was still _reversible_. Embarrassing, but not damaging. My kind of curse. "...yes," I agreed, putting my book aside. "Yes, I would."

Lucius's smiles just kept getting meaner. "Good girl."


	7. Better Be--

Eventually, we had to leave for school.

"Why train?" I wondered at dinner the night before we departed.

Slinky had produced beef wellington, which I knew in a vague sense involved beef and pastry somewhere, but which I'd never actually had. It turned out to involve a whole eye fillet that was coated in pate de foie gras and a chopped mushroom reduction and rolled in a flaky, carefully layered puff pastry.

I suppose I'd expected something slightly more rustic, given the name. It was actually really good, if rich. I'd tell Slinky later. She freaked out if I thanked her and completely lost her head if I apologised, but she did like compliments to her work.

"It's a tradition," Lucius said, delicately spearing a roast potato. All of the Malfoys ate with these dainty table manners - my best attempt at table etiquette was equal to their informal manners. Watching them made me feel huge, clumsy, and frequently anxious.

On the up side, eating slowly and carefully at every shared meal was probably doing wonders for my waistline.

"Wouldn't Apparition or portkey be quicker?"

"Certainly," Narcissa agreed, "but the Hogwarts Express has been running for centuries. It gives friends a chance to catch up and first years the opportunity to meet one another."

Because we couldn't do that _at school_? I furrowed my brows but didn't say anything.

"You'll get to meet Crabbe and Goyle," Draco said, sounding like he was so bored by the prospect that he was about to expire on the spot.

I'd figured that much. "Friends?" I asked.

He snorted rudely. "They're about as clever as fairies, so no."

"Don't -make that noise," Lucius said, but made absolutely no comment on calling the other children stupid. Priorities among the Malfoy family were fascinating.

"Pity." I said, trying to remember where in the genealogies I'd seen the surnames. "There was a Crabbe in the Black line, wasn't there? Are we related? Is that why you know them?"

"Yes, dear. His grandfather is my great-uncle," Narcissa said placidly. "Irma Crabbe was my grandmother."

It took me a moment. "We're... second cousins..." No, wait, that made _Narcissa_ his second cousin, didn't it? Bugger. "...once removed?"

"I see it escaped your notice that Gregory Goyle is also your third cousin on the other side of your family," Lucius drawled, shooting Narcissa an unreadable look.

She returned it with innocent eyes. "Why, Lucius, whatever could you be implying?"

"Perhaps I should have taken charge of more of Victoria's lessons."

"Are they really _that_ stupid?" I asked Draco quietly, while Lucius and Narcissa were occupied with what was either thinly disguised antagonism or thinly disguised flirting. Maybe both.

" _Yes_ ," said Draco emphatically. "Mother says I have to _take care of them._ Make sure they don't get picked on or forget things. Merlin, I hope they get sorted into Hufflepuff."

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. That was... unexpected. I'd assumed Draco enjoyed having his thugs, but perhaps there was some obligation on both sides? How odd. Well, maybe the idea of lackeys would grow on him - he hadn't gotten to school yet, after all.

"I'd rather spend time with _you_ , and honestly that's saying something," Draco added spitefully, as though I might not have figured out precisely how boring and stupid the children were. As boring as _me_ , wow.

I rolled my eyes. "Thanks, little brother."

"Draco," snapped Narcissa, drawing my attention to the fact that neither she nor Lucius had been anywhere near as distracted as I'd thought.

"What? All she does is wander around the library and mutter to herself."

"I know she does, but it's not polite to just come out and say it."

Draco quieted, but he steadfastly did not apologise, and Narcissa went back to... arguing. Or flirting. I was still on the fence about which. Flirguing. Or maybe argirting?

"I'll take them off your hands sometimes, if we end up in the same House," I offered. There was very little chance I was going to end up sorted into Slytherin, so the offer was pretty much harmless.

Draco shot me a considering look. "Good," he said, and then returned to eating like I wasn't even there.

Over the month I'd pretty much gotten used to pretending Draco wasn't being as much of a little shit as he actually was. _Little brother_ was something I'd begun to call him mostly as an awkward kind of compensation for how very little I actually felt for him - I wasn't really an affectionate person by nature, and I felt sort of neutral-to-wary about most people. But Draco was actually annoying. And a _brat_.

I knew that if I corrected his behaviour he'd just resent _me_ , and honestly it wasn't really mine to correct either way. Life was absolutely going to hold him down and kick the snot out of him one day. He had it coming, basically.

I sort of hoped it wasn't in the form of Voldemort, but... well, there was not a lot I could actually do about Voldemort, unless something changed pretty seriously or I experienced a lightning strike of inspiration. The best thing I could do was keep my head down.

Thoughtfully, I ate a piece of gluteny crusty goodness, savouring the pastry more than the rich fatty meat. Maybe I really _would_ go to Australia for a couple of years there... at least it would be warmer there. Also markedly fewer Dark Lords. Win-win, am I right?

I slept in snatches for almost four hours that night before I got up and checked and re-checked that I had everything packed. I was looking forward to learning more about magic, yes, but I was absolutely not looking forward to spending all my time with children - good god, even the oldest students would be a decade younger than I.

I begged a pot of tea off Slinky around dawn and settled out on the balcony to watch the light creep over the manor's gardens.

"Do you want a cup?" I asked her, essentially expecting that she'd be pissed off and decline, which is what usually happened when I tried to be polite.

There was a pause. "Slinky would not do such a thing," she said finally. But she seemed to be hesitating. Then she sighed. "Dobby is... more forward. He's being busy this morning, but if Miss wants a house elf for _company-_ " she said the word 'company' with the greatest distaste "- Dobby can make tea too."

I frowned at her for a second. "Slinky," I said after a moment. "Am I bothering you when I ask things like that?"

She sniffed. "Slinky is not bothered."

"Alright, but - perhaps there are things you'd rather be doing?"

She looked blankly at me, face impassive. "Are there things Miss would rather Slinky be doing?"

I sighed. "No, Slinky. I don't mean to upset you. Thanks for letting me know - next time I'll ask Dobby."

She nodded sharply and disappeared with a faint pop.

Maybe I was being unfair. Maybe I, in trying to be nice, was just trying to assuage my own guilt over doing nothing to help the elves. It was a complicated question and I felt deeply uncomfortable thinking about it.

That discomfort in itself meant that the issue bore thinking about, but not this morning. This morning I had a pot of tea and a sunrise followed by a very long train ride, and that was quite enough to be going on with.

The Malfoy family was blessedly organised. Where I'd been used to housemates and family members who were always late, always disorganised, who became angry when I told them we needed to leave, _now_ , to be on time, the Malfoys were dressed, packed and ready to leave by ten o'clock - which left plenty of time to deliver last minute gifts and lectures.

Draco received a watch and a lecture about upholding the Malfoy honour and behaving in ways befitting a member of high pure blood society, interspersed with some seriously absurd 'I'm-so-proud-my-boy's-all-grown-up' level mothering and crushing physical affection from Lucius. Narcissa petted his hair and ducked down to squeeze him tight, which made him flush awkwardly.

" _Mother_ ," he muttered, because apparently physical affection from his mother was more embarrassing somehow. His protests seemed to just make her redouble her efforts.

"I don't have an heirloom timepiece for you, I'm afraid," Lucius admitted.

"Less to take care of or break," I said prosaically, shrugging one shoulder. Oh, good. I was going to get out unscathed.

"I did find you something for the train ride," he said, a little reproachfully, as though it was hurtful that I thought he hadn't gotten me anything. I was immediately tense. "I imagine it's rather more to your taste anyway."

I sort of dreamily hoped he was about to whip out a loaf of fresh-baked bread, and outside of that fantasy I actually expected him to foist a new hex off on me - since he seemed to believe that teaching me to inflict suffering upon others was the ideal father-daughter bonding activity. Both thoughts were wrong: it was actually a book.

What, weren't there enough of them in his library already? The book he was holding was nothing exciting or special looking by the family's standards: a cloth cover in a muted hunter green, new or at least very well cared for. I blinked and accepted it, flipping it over to read the cover.

 _The Fortress of Ekrizdis: Azkaban through the Ages._

Oh.

I blinked again.

Lucius had evidently remembered I studied criminology... and had gone out of his way to find a book on the history of the UK's only wizarding prison. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. On one hand, I did want to read it and it was an excellent choice- but on the other, it was a very... sentimental gift, and I felt, on some nebulous emotional level, uncomfortably beholden to him because of it. It made my belly clench tightly.

To a point, it would have been significantly easier to stomach if I'd been given something with some historical significance to the family - that, at least, would have come loaded with completely comprehensible expectations. Narcissa had gone far out of her way to make sure I understood my obligations to the Malfoy family. That was simple, if daunting.

This was... a minefield. Lucius was a proud, mean and unexpectedly delicate man giving a gift laden with sentiment - an _emotional overture_.

That carried a different set of obligations. At some point, inevitably, he'd want some kind of emotional engagement _back_.

Okay. Okay, I wasn't going to panic. It was fine. I was -

Nnnope, that was panic. Or dying. Maybe dying instead? My heart was racing, and I did feel like my chest was being crushed.

 _Breathe, Victoria. Come on. Breathe_.

I swallowed and ran my fingertips over the embossing. "Thank you," I got out, pleased to hear that my voice was low and rough but not shaking.

When I looked up again, Lucius's eyes were narrowed, calculating. Shit. _Shit_. "Victoria?"

"Seriously," I said, trying to shove my mixed feelings away with limited success. "Thanks. It's a really good choice. Thank you." I shut my mouth before I could blurt out 'oh my god I'm so sorry' or 'it's not you, it's me'.

"You... do like it?" He asked carefully.

"I do. It's great. It's - _thank you_ ," I repeated, like it would sound somehow more sincere if I said it more forcefully.

He tapped his fingertips on one arm, eyeing me like he could dissect my brain just by staring hard enough. "Good," he said at last, apparently giving it up.

Then it was an uncomfortably clinging hug from Narcissa - and for a change I responded just as strongly, hiding my anxiety in her shoulder and listening much too intently to her murmurs in my ear, focusing on the feel of her dainty hand in my hair - and then a Side-Along Apparition straight to Platform Nine and Three Quarters.

The crushing blackness that came with Apparition dissipated swiftly but the assigned Apparition point was bustling: full of people rushing and coming into being right nearby with a powerful _crack._ They moved quickly and with little care for the people in their way, and I struggled with the immediate fear that they'd smack into me and hurt me or something.

I stumbled over my own foot in my haste to get away from that area, nearly dragging Narcissa with me - except that she was almost as eager to get away as I was.

The crowd on the platform thinned as we got further from the crush of the Apparition point until I finally felt like I could breathe again. I was still sort of unsettled by the business with the book.

King's Cross was a train station, and while I couldn't have said what the other platforms were like, from Nine and Three Quarters it was pretty standard: dull brick walls, cement platforms. There was a sign overhead in red and yellow declaring it to be the platform running the Hogwarts Express Service, and a dismal electric light that almost blended in with the ambient lighting in daytime overhead - I only noticed it because the glow of it flickered under the pressure of all the magic going on.

The people were... different. It occurred to me then that my family here had seriously drab fashion sense for their culture, and since everybody else on the bloody platform made my eyes water I was kind of grateful. There were fuschias and limes and cherry red tartans - a man in electric blue wellies and a lemon-yellow overcoat - a woman with a _fucking taxidermy bird on her head -_ -

"Victoria?"

"...do you think that woman knows she's wearing, um, an entire dead animal? Like they didn't take its skin off or anything. It's staring."

Narcissa followed my gaze and her nose wrinkled almost on its own like she'd smelled something uncommonly foul. "Oh, Augusta Longbottom," she sighed, sounding torn between amusement and disgust.

I recognised the name with the strange amalgamation of thoughts I was beginning to accept - Augusta Longbottom, guardian to Neville Longbottom and mother of Frank, popularly thought to be overbearing, sentimental and disciplinarian. There was another part of me, though, that recognised her family name and was quickly sorting through blood lines to figure out how closely we were related.

"Oh," I said slowly. One of the 'sacred' twenty-eight blood lines, then. I tugged thoughtfully on a lock of hair. "I guess breeding doesn't guarantee, er." I paused.

"No," Narcissa said, gracefully picking up on my meaning despite the unfinished comment. "She never did have the least bit of taste." She looked around, checking to see where Lucius had gotten to.

I had absolutely no appreciation for trains. I knew there were people who built models and cared enough to understand how the boilery thing and the pistony bits actually worked and what kinds of gauges you needed for rails and all that rubbish, but I was not among them. I'd ridden a steam train only once before - a muggle one, of course: the Puffing Billy, a century-old train kept as a kind of heritage experience in the Dandenong Ranges. I'd been dragged along as a child and all I remembered about it was that it had been deeply unpleasant: slow, crowded with people and, at the time, unmercifully hot.

My first real view of the Hogwarts Express was through a cloud of steam and brightly-coloured wizarding robes. It was painted a gleaming scarlet, and through the steam it looked polished and well-maintained. Perhaps wizarding locomotives would be more convenient and less pointless than muggle ones.

On the other hand... we could have Side-Alonged to Hogsmeade. Or taken a bloody portkey to the school grounds. What even was the point?

Briefly, Narcissa raised one hand for attention over the crowd, and people peeled away before Lucius as he strode toward us. "Bracing," he said drily, once he could be heard. "I think I'd forgotten what this was like."

"It's been some time," Narcissa agreed with a warm touch of nostalgia. Then she sighed. "The train leaves in fifteen minutes, so you'd better find yourselves seats - go on." She hesitated. "Take care of each other, won't you?"

"We'll be fine, mother," said Draco, rolling his eyes.

I lingered after him for a moment.

"Do keep an eye out for him, won't you?"

I glanced over at where Draco was making short work of loading his trunk, clearly assisted by a featherlight charm. I hesitated to say he'd be fine on his own, because he'd be an enormous brat on his own, but I doubted I could actually do much about that.

"Sure," I shrugged. I probably wouldn't even see him that often. I wasn't sure how many classes were shared by Slytherin and Ravenclaw.

"Owl us after the sorting," Lucius interjected.

I nodded, and then, mindful of my baggage, I climbed aboard the Hogwarts Express.

Somewhere on the train, the Weasley twins would be helping Harry with his baggage; Ron would be lamenting corned beef sandwiches and Draco would be rounding up his goons somewhere. Neville would be in a state over losing his toad and Percy would be preening over his new badge.

I dragged my unnaturally light trunk to an empty compartment, shoved it away and slid the door closed. Then I slumped into the seat, closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. Sleeplessness rarely caught up with me these days - or, more accurately, I no longer remembered what getting a good night's sleep actually felt like - but if anything made me aware of feeling exhausted, it was crowds. My eyes felt sandpapery. I wondered if it would be poor form to nap through this thrilling 'traditional' train ride.

I roused myself reluctantly, knowing if I did take a nap on the train I'd stand no chance of actually sleeping that evening. As it was, it wasn't hard to avoid sleep: there were already children stomping up and down the aisle, yelling and slamming compartment doors.

The third time somebody raced past and rattled my door, making me jump and twitch, I stuck my head out and snatched their cloak, pulling them up short. It was a boy, blond haired, brown eyed, round in the face and still soft with puppy fat. Muggle-born, judging by his clothing.

"Hi," I said flatly. "Do you think you could _not_ do that?"

Which was of course how I ended up with three eleven year olds yelling and smacking the compartment door like a zoo exhibit, because, and let me be clear here: _fucking children_.

I sighed, drew a book from my things - any book, at this point, to distract my attention from my headache - and wondered if it was considered poor form to hex people before the train had even pulled out of the station.

So much for not wanting to hurt people.

I'd forgotten about, you know, _children_. Ugh.

I was flicking between entries for _datura stramonium_ and _jimson weed_ (same thing, who knew?) in _1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi_ when somewhere outside the compartment door somebody bellowed: "Hey, ickle firsties! Wanna see a giant tarantula?"

There were sounds of horror and one high pitched shriek, and then suddenly, blessedly, actual silence. I closed my eyes, revelling in the moment. Outside, something whistled and the train began to move out.

The compartment door opened, revealing a kid with dreadlocks and a mischievous smile, only a little older. He had a big box tucked under one arm. "Mind if I sit here?"

"Not really," I shrugged. Then: "Do you actually have a giant tarantula?" Spiders were cool as long as they weren't touching me - or unidentifiable, potentially dangerous and crawling around my house. I didn't _love_ them, but I was generally a believer in a live-and-let-live policy for pest-hunting spiders.

He grinned, carefully held out the box, and opened the lid.

"Oh, wow," I mumbled, staring.

I'd never actually seen a tarantula before, but this one was - oh my god, it was so _furry_. It had dark hair with pale banding around its joints, a huge fluffy abdomen - one long, fuzzy leg poked out from the box, and the boy prodded it back in quickly with his wand.

There was a visceral sense of revulsion, but there kind of always was with spiders. I peered closer - god, you could see its shining little eyes. Kind of cute, in a creepy many-legged sort of way.

"I think it was somebody's pet, probably. I found it in ma's garden, but honestly I think it has an engorging charm on it or something."

"Huh," I said, wondering at the kinds of people who thought spiders made good pets. Personally I wouldn't have kept one, but there was no accounting for taste. I settled back against my seat. "Odd."

"Right? I mean, he's cool, but I'll probably just let him out near the Forest when we get to Hogwarts. I couldn't see keeping him as a pet... You know, you're the first girl who hasn't freaked out," he added thoughtfully.

I raised my eyebrows, wondering if I should be insulted. "I'm not sure that's a 'girl thing'," I pointed out, trying to sound jovial and not like I was privately grinding my teeth. "I asked, after all - for everyone else it might just be a 'shoved a giant spider under your nose' thing."

"I am affronted," he said solemnly, "by your implication that I would show this thing to anybody unwilling."

"I'm sure," I drawled.

He dropped the lid back on his box and grinned brightly. "Lee Jordan," he added, pointing a thumb at himself.

Oh, the biased Quidditch commentator boy, right? And friends with the terror twins. Hmm. "Victoria Malfoy," I responded.

"What, really?" He frowned. "I know of them. But your accent..."

"Yeah, I recently moved back here from Australia," I lied - or maybe it wasn't a lie, really. It was in another reality but it was still _an_ Australia... "I've only been in the UK for about a month. It's... different."

"Huh." A pause. "...Say something Australian!"

I was tempted to say ' _Lee's a mad bastard - but he won't just piss off, but_ ' but it was probably less appropriate than it felt. "It's not actually a foreign language," I tried instead.

"No, but -"

I sighed. "G'day," I said drily. Somehow it came out sounding _more_ inexplicably Australian, probably because it wasn't a phrase I'd ever actually used.

Lee looked briefly but intensely delighted. "Is it strange here? Are things different?"

"Yes." So different. "It's cold."

He laughed. "But it's summer!"

It certainly was summer, but that didn't stop me from being wrapped in a heavy cloak and feeling faintly chilled anyway. It was a pity my warming charms were still not really up to par. Probably better to be cold than to accidentally set myself on fire though.

"It's like sixteen degrees," I muttered, scowling.

He looked incredulous, and also kind of thrilled. "Say something else!"

I gave him a flat, unimpressed look. "What do you want me to say?"

"What do they say? Um, oh! Putting a shrimp on the barbie."

"Nobody calls them _shrimp_ ," I said, wrinkling my nose. "They're prawns. Or maybe yabbies?" I was pretty sure yabbies were something different to prawns, actually. Whatever, they were all gross and shelled and weird. "I don't know, I don't really like seafood," I admitted.

I entertained Jordan for a little while longer, feeling increasingly worn as I did so. It was all right - I mean, he was thirteen or so but mostly tolerable, even if he did keep asking me to say various stupid phrases and wanted to regale me with every detail of some recent Quidditch match - but I was still pleased when the train pulled out and he disappeared to the sounds of someone calling for him in the aisle.

"Sorry, that'll be Fred," he said, just before he scooped up his giant spider and tumbled back out the compartment.

Blessedly alone once more, I returned to my book. I glanced at the book Lucius had given me, wondering if I should crack it open, but -

I was still feeling kinda weird, actually. I'd have to wait until it didn't make me nervous. The herbology text was pretty easy reading anyway. I killed an hour doing that, and then ended up looking out the window as the countryside changed around me. It had passed into green fields, occasionally dotted with cattle. Idyllic, but honestly a bit boring.

I missed my phone. My phone had the internet, and the internet had fanfiction. I could have been reading something interesting - except, wait, no. The internet was barely a thing. Half of the fandoms I'd want to check out didn't even exist in this world yet.

...Bleak. Very bleak.

I stared at nothing for a few long, harrowing moments, wondering what I was doing with my life.

Then I wondered if wizarding fanfiction was a thing. It wasn't _that_ far fetched - hell, the church had spawned many a fanfic over time. Did people ship Rowena and Helga?

I kept staring.

Maybe wizarding fanfiction didn't exist, but if it didn't, it _should_. I wasn't a _bad_ writer. I probably could... Maybe... anonymously? I was pretty sure Lucius wouldn't approve otherwise. Hm, how did one anonymise handwriting? I'd...

" _Here_ you are."

I blinked. I'd heard the compartment door open, but I had sort of hoped that it'd be somebody who'd ignore me completely. No such luck, unfortunately, because it was Draco.

I looked over his shoulder, blinking at the sight of two large, ugly boys on either side of him. One of them looked sort of familiar...

"Vincent Crabbe," Draco said imperiously, gesturing at the least familiar of them, a remarkably ugly child with a hairline that climbed halfway down his forehead - apparently my second cousin once removed. Charming. "And Gregory Goyle," he gestured at the other one -

Oh. _That_ was the kid upon whom I'd rained a hail of Ollivander's window.

...Whoops.

Small eyes, long arms, big hands and feet - Goyle, I thought, was going to grow up to be enormous. If he survived. I couldn't remember which of them accidentally set himself on fire with dark magic in the future, but I knew one of them had.

"My sister, Victoria Malfoy. She's in our year too."

"Hi," I said, trying - and mostly failing - to muster some polite good cheer. Then I squinted. "Your hand is bleeding."

Goyle glowered down at his bloodied finger. "Rat," he grunted.

Rat-?

Draco prevented me from having to actually think about that, because he hurled himself into the seat opposite me and immediately began complaining. "I suppose none of us should be surprised that a Weasley showed up to school with vermin instead of a pet. You'll want to get that looked at - who knows where that rat's been."

Ah, I remembered now. Draco must have come to me fresh from his encounter with Ron and Harry - and Scabbers. The idea of Pettigrew, perfectly able to sneak about all over in rat form, made me uneasy. Very creepy.

I distracted myself and leaned forward to inspect Goyle's hand, carefully avoiding actually having to touch him at all. "You'll need to clean it, at least. Rat bites can become easily infected. What happened with Weasley? The same as those ones we met in the shop?"

"Yes. Father says they're blood traitors," Draco declared. "Riff-raff of the worst kind - I'm inclined to believe him. The one I just met was-" he wrinkled his nose and made a derisive noise. "Good job they're all in Gryffindor, I suppose. No chance we'll have to share a dorm."

I wondered where Draco was getting his information - perhaps he'd asked Lucius during the time they spent together? I'd only really started seeing Lucius much on my own over the past few days, and that time was mostly spent with him gleefully teaching me hexes - he probably imparted some different things to Draco.

I tapped my fingertips on my book, only half-listening to Draco waxing magniloquent about Weasley as I considered it.

"I can't believe that boy from Malkin's was _Harry Potter_ ," he added sourly. "If I'd known-"

I doubted he'd have been successful if he'd tried to be ingratiating and impressive, either. "There's nothing you can do about it now," I pointed out.

He glared at me for interrupting his whining. "Are you going to come in?" I asked Goyle, who was still hovering in the doorway. It was mostly directed at him because he was bleeding still. "Stop dabbing at the blood - put steady pressure on it," I advised.

Goyle obeyed wordlessly.

"It's not fair," Draco complained, like a much younger child.

 _Life's not fair_ , I thought, but instead of saying it I just watched him in silence.

"Weasley's - stupid, and - and _poor_ -"

He went on in this vein for some time, occasionally dropping bitterly cruel jokes about the family as a whole. Since he was safe from reprisals via Goyle or Crabbe, and I was passively ignoring him, his wit ran long.

Note to self: Draco did not take rejection very well _at all_.

Our train ride dawdled on, and although the scenery was pretty I ended up being much more interested in my book - I'd moved on to _Magical Drafts and Potions,_ which I'd only read through once. It was a beginner's book, but it was one of the few that wasn't so very dumbed down - it explained where exceptions and specificities existed rather than completely ignoring them, and at the end of each chapter was a recommended reading list. I wasn't sure I'd like potions as a class, but it was definitely a preferred text.

I hadn't really remembered that Hermione would walk up and down the whole train seeking out Neville's toad. But then she visited. She knocked once, briskly, and opened the compartment's door without waiting for a response, and I knew immediately who she was even though she was just standing there and -

\- and _wow_ her hair was, like, an explosion of tight-curled... hair. Hair was almost too mild a word. Boom. Hair.

Other than that, when I glanced at her I could see that her skirt was hemmed a little too long, dowdy rather than modest, and there was ink on her cuff where it peaked out from beneath the sleeve of her outer robe. Clean but slap-dash, like presentation and deportment were unimportant; an afterthought.

Neville was hovering to one side of her, sort of half behind and half beside. He was a pale, moon-faced creature with unprepossessing features, and he was cowed in... well, in a kind of existential sense, actually. His eyes darted, and he looked upon everything like it might be a threat.

I felt nervous just looking at him.

So I didn't.

"Sorry," said Hermione, by way of excusing herself and without sounding at all contrite, "But has any of you seen a toad? Only," she nudged Neville with her elbow, "Neville's lost his."

"Then he's done an excellent job," Draco drawled, sneering. "Should I have been so unfortunate as to bring a toad, I'd have lost it at the earliest opportunity, too."

Of course. Draco was still in a mood.

I suppressed a sigh.

Neville went red across the cheeks and tugged on Hermione's sleeve, mumbling something to her. If it was a request to leave as quickly as possible she didn't heed it - she'd gone red, too, although on her it was more anger than embarrassment.

I wondered if I should intercede. I didn't want to argue with Draco in public - he was a rude little shit, but he was also one of the few people I was actually going to be unavoidably stuck with.

...also I didn't want to be the one to seem even slightly responsible for his behaviour.

"I wasn't asking if you _liked_ toads," Hermione was saying, sharp and snappish, "have you _seen_ one?"

Draco's expression seemed to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, his preferences were of paramount importance to every conversation.

He opened his mouth to say something else, and I decided on interrupting in a way that didn't require getting into an argument or correcting him. I'd just try to get the whole business over quickly.

I closed my book with a quiet snap. "We've not seen one," I said. "But the prefects meet in the first compartment. One of them might be able to summon it for you."

Neville looked daunted by the suggestion. "It's not-"

" _Thank_ you," said Hermione sharply, shooting Draco an annoyed look before turning away and taking Neville with her.

The door closed behind them with a thump.

Draco scoffed quietly. "Who brings a _toad_?" he wondered.

I wrinkled my nose. "Maybe he's allergic to insect bites or something?" I honestly couldn't think of a good reason to want a toad, either, actually.

The only toads I'd ever been exposed to were cane toads, which... well, they were a horribly invasive species in Australia, and I keenly remembered steering a big old truck with an uncle as a child and counting how many of them we could hit on lonely country roads at dusk. _Splat._

I'd... probably not mention that to Neville if I could help it.

If this train ride was a serious taste of what life would be like in the castle, there was a really good chance that I was not going to mention anything to anybody, because I would be _in hiding_.

I hadn't met any of the Ravenclaws yet, though, I didn't think. Maybe they wouldn't be...

I glanced at Crabbe and Goyle, neither of whom had so much as spoken during Hermione's brief visit.

At least they were quiet.

If I concentrated on my book maybe I could pretend I was alone.

What warmth there was waned as we moved into late afternoon, and by the time evening was looming I'd wrapped my cloak tightly around me, shivering slightly despite its comforting warmth.

"It's really not that cold," Draco said, with the air of one who had said it many times before. Probably because he _had_ said it many times before.

"It's freezing," I assured him, frowning at my book. It was a pity I was still fairly likely to set myself on fire with a warming charm. I had to take my hands out of my cloak if I wanted to turn the pages. It was a terrible dilemma. There was probably a spell that would turn the pages for me on a timer... which I would learn later. Still, it'd mean I could lay in bed on my back reading without having to hold a book up. I could pull blankets up to my eyeballs...

"If it were freezing," Crabbe interjected, quite logically even though he was missing the point completely, "it would be snowing."

This reminded me that snowing was a thing that actually happened in Scotland, rather than a cute exotic thing other people had to deal with. I wrinkled my nose. Gross.

By the time we got to Hogsmeade the last light of day was fading fast. I hesitated in the train's doorway before trailing after Draco. Brr.

"Firs' years! Firs' years over here!"

I looked up - and _up_ \- at the enormous silhouette of Hagrid where he stood backlit by burning torches. His skin had a ruddy glow and he was positively covered in hair. I bet _he_ wasn't cold.

Being part of the first year contingent and thus destined to take tiny, magically-propelled boats across the lake was unpleasant. Traditional, but unpleasant. I was beginning to be very sick of "traditions", especially when they involved completely unnecessary experiences of convoluted and uncomfortable transport.

I mean: _why_?

I lost Draco somewhere in the crush. I wasn't really trying that hard to stay with him, to be honest - he was a point of familiarity in chaos, yes, but he was also an eleven year old brat and not that comforting to have around. It meant that I ended up in a boat with three strangers while we glided across the night-dark surface of the lake.

"Are you nervous?" one person asked, looking dubiously at me. She was a dark-eyed, pale-skinned thing with an upturned nose and expensive boots peeking out from beneath her school robes. Wizarding family, I decided.

"Not really," I said, which was a colossal lie. I was nervous, even though I was trying not to be. How all these kids could just be _okay_ with being packed off to a completely unfamiliar place with a bunch of unfamiliar people to live was beyond me...

It had been a lot easier to ignore on the train.

"No, me neither," she said, tossing a spill of dark hair over her shoulder. "Although some of these others seem to be."

I followed her gaze to another occupant of the boat, a tall and gangly boy who was studiously looking at his feet. His face, what I could see of it, was a bit grey.

"All right there, Macmillan?" drawled my companion with a mean smile.

"Fine, thanks," he said shortly. It didn't make her smile any less.

The boat gave a gentle wobble as something moved beneath the lake and he made a horrified _urk_ sound and slapped one hand over his mouth.

"Er," I said helplessly. "Are you going to be all right? It's - I mean -"

"Yeah," said the girl, on the verge of laughter, "wouldn't want you to go overboard when you inevitably lose your l-"

"Stop it," said the last member of our boat waspishly. "Why would you tease him about that?" She had lovely dark skin and thick plaited hair, with large dark eyes and a full mouth. It was hard to say in the ruddy firelight out on the lake, but I thought she was probably going to be amazingly pretty when she was older.

"It's just a bit of fun, Padma," sighed the other girl, rolling her eyes.

I sort of agreed with Padma - which, I assumed was Padma Patil. I wondered where her sister was? - since it was obvious that Macmillan was not coping well with the boat ride.

"We're almost there," I told him, peering worriedly over at him. Good god I hoped he did not throw up on me. Or anywhere else, actually, since I sincerely hated the unique stomach-acid-bile-sweet smell of vomit. But at least not on me.

He looked up uncertainly, seemed to realise what he was doing, and then looked down again, green-faced. "Right," he muttered.

"Um," I said, looking toward the other two. Padma was having a low, annoyed-sounding conversation with her friend, who seemed increasingly bored with the lecture. No help there. "Um, so! So, which House do you think you'll be sorted into?" I said with forced cheer.

"Hufflepuff," he said promptly. "Whole family's in Hufflepuff."

"Eugh," muttered the pale girl, like she couldn't think of anything worse.

"They seem, erm, very friendly," I suggested. "Lots of... respecting boundaries and working together and... er, things. And." I paused. "Things," I finished lamely. Oh, god, why did I even try?

The pale girl started to laugh. "Oh, yes," she crowed, delighted. "Lots of _things_."

Macmillan gave me a dark look from under his lashes. "Right," he said sarcastically. " _Things_."

I covered my eyes with one hand. "Shit," I muttered.

Blessedly, Macmillan wasn't even paying attention anymore: "Shut _up_ , Parkinson. You laugh like a hyena."

Oh, was that Pansy? Yeah, I supposed I could see that. She'd had a mean sense of humour in the novels, too. Weird, though, that they all seemed to know each other... except, no, were all purebloods, weren't they? Closed society, I supposed.

I remained awkwardly silent and didn't try to comfort anybody again. You'd think I'd have sufficient experience with social skills and talking that I could at least converse with a bunch of eleven year olds but it didn't seem to end well for me.

We saw the castle then, and it was - thankfully - difficult to think of other things. The silhouette of it was huge against the dark sky, lit with the ruddy glow of firelight. There were parts of the castle that seemed impossible, a kind of magic-fuelled 'fuck you' to physics; battlements that led nowhere, crumbling corners, towers that could not possibly have existed, perched precariously as the were - there was a distinctly Escher-esque feel to the whole business.

When we made it from the boats, with Macmillan looking relieved to be back on dry land, we were greeted at the castle doors by a tall, hard-looking woman. Her eyes were bright and lively, her hair was coal black and glossy under the firelight, and perched atop her head was a large, pointed hat. Her face wasn't pretty or delicate, but she was distinctly striking.

I had expected, I admit, somebody who looked - well, _like Maggie Smith_. But Minerva McGonagall looked very little like a seventy five year old muggle actress. This probably shouldn't have surprised me, given the relative aging of the magical population, but she looked _maybe_ like she was in her late thirties.

She did, however, seem very severe, and her eyes lingered on each of us as she waited for us all to line up before her.

McGonagall told us that we'd be sorted soon, and for us to wait right here until she'd returned to take us to the ceremony.

I should have been listening more closely to her Your House Is Your Family Here speech but honestly I was more interested in the movement of ghosts above us: pearly-white and shining, murmuring to themselves about Peeves, drifting above our heads like they had all the time in the world. I supposed they did - time would have to be pretty irrelevant once you were dead, surely?

They noticed us, though, and there was a moment for the Fat Friar to wish to see us all in his old house before McGonagall returned and led us all out into the Great Hall.

It was very grand: the crockery and cutlery bore gilt edges, the candles floated above average head-height, providing a warm illumination across the whole sprawling room. There were ghosts glowing brightly through the throng of chattering students and a table removed just for the teachers. Above us were dark skies and starlight.

"-enchanted to look like the sky," I heard Hermione hiss somewhere further down the group. "I read about it in _Hogwarts: A History_."

"What an annoying little know-it-all," muttered Pansy right behind me. Whether or not she'd intended for me to hear was uncertain, but I had heard, so I turned to glance back at Hermione.

She had a death grip on Neville's sleeve, apparently having caught herself a friend and now unwilling to release him. Her eyes gleamed with excitement, but -

I sighed. I wanted to say 'she's very young,' but they were _all_ very young. Hermione was just young in an _extra annoying_ way.

"Well, there's almost no chance she'll be in Slytherin," said Padma philosophically. "So you won't have to worry about it."

"Not many muggle borns in Slytherin," agreed Macmillan thoughtfully. "But then, Parkinson might not be in Slytherin either." He cut a look at her. "What'll you do then?"

"Pfft. Of course I will," Pansy rolled her eyes.

"You don't _know_ that," Padma pointed out.

"I guess. I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn't be _too_ bad." She paused for a second. "If I get sorted into Hufflepuff I'm getting back on the train," she added, eyeing Macmillan.

"Hey now!" He looked vaguely affronted. "We're good sorts, which is more than I can say for that lot-" he jerked his head toward a table with a green and silver central runner. I followed his nod. It was true that the Slytherins seemed to have gone far out of their way to make themselves look like an intimidating, rough lot.

Then, "What about you? - You asked me, but I didn't get to hear where you thought you'd be sorted."

It took me a moment to realise I was being addressed. "Oh-"

"I don't think I got your name," Padma said thoughtfully, eyeing me.

"Didn't you hear her accent?" Pansy said, sounding delighted to be able to share gossip. "Malfoy, isn't it?" she said. I raised my eyebrows, because, um, _yes_ , but - "Mama told me she was coming from Australia," she said with a superior little glance in Padma's direction.

"Oh," said another voice nearby thoughtfully. "I heard something about a Malfoy girl - didn't know about the accent, though. Thought that was odd to hear."

I turned. It was a stringy kid, tall with a spindly sort of build, blond hair and pale eyes. "Nott," he said, smiling, like he expected the name to ring bells and open doors - and it did, because I knew him, knew his family, had an easy recollection of where we were related.

I smiled back mechanically, wondering at how this all worked. These children all knew about me. I'd known the pureblood circles were close. This close, though? "Malfoy."

"If you let them all call you that I'll never get a moment's peace," Draco said, startling me from somewhere near my left ear. He'd evidently shouldered Macmillan out of the way in complete silence somehow. "She's Victoria," he added pointedly.

"Tsk," Pansy clicked her tongue, looking between Draco and I. " _Lucky._ I wanted a sister."

"No," said Padma, sounding very put upon indeed, "you don't."

" _I can hear you_ ," said another voice, somewhere further down the group.

"Yes!" Called Padma, right back, raising her eyebrows as she turned her head, smiling: "I know you can."

Her twin sister said something pithy and _very_ rude. I snorted softly.

"Quiet." McGonagall's voice cut right through our chatter.

Everybody fell obediently silent. Like, the entire Hall, all the tables - even the professors. Evidently McGonagall knew that same trick Lucius did that made people shut up.

She was standing before the teachers' table with a little stool and a hat.

The hat sung. It was just as weird as that sounded. It didn't have a mouthlike crease or anything, it just kind of... swayed gently, and then began belting out its song in this enormous, deep, operatic voice.

The whole Hall listened as that huge voice swelled, even though they must have heard similar songs many times before.

I was kind of sceptical about the hat's provenance, honestly. It was ragged and old, sure, but I had a hard time imagining that it was Gryffindor's. Gryffindor was _old_. He predated the Norman Conquest by centuries. He predated the Malfoy family _keeping accurate records of their blood lines_. That's how old that hat was meant to be.

Old as _balls_ , was what I was getting at.

Still, I supposed as long as the hat did its job it didn't matter.

"When I call your name," McGonagall began, "you will come to the stool. I shall place the hat upon your head, and the hat will sort you into one of four Houses."

"Abbott!" called McGonagall, and our whole group stilled while one small girl emerged to sit upon the stool. It only took the hat a moment's contemplation to sort her into Hufflepuff, and then we were off.

I kept a careful eye out for Ravenclaws, because I hardly even knew _of_ any of them. Boot, Corner, Goldstein - I watched them trail down to the table with the big blue and bronze runner, jammed where it was in an unfortunate position between Gryffindor and Slytherin. The Ravenclaws certainly didn't seem nearly as purposefully intimidating as the Slytherins - and when one of them was sorted they weren't nearly as loud and rowdy as the Gryffindors. One of them was actually reading a novel, clearly bored with the ceremony already.

The seemed, true to stereotype, to be a quiet, studious bunch - even the younger ones. It was something of a relief to know it.

"Malfoy, Draco," McGonagall called.

I watched attentively but expectantly. It took the hat about a fifth of a second to shriek: " _SLYTHERIN_ ," when it touched Draco's head, which I was certain he'd be pleased about. To be fair, he _was_ a cunning, backstabbing, ambitious little shit. If he'd been sorted anywhere else I'd have been, like, baffled. _Baffled_.

The applause was met with a couple of people laughing over at the Slytherin table. A Malfoy in Slytherin. Who'd have thought!

"Oh, good job," Pansy murmured, clapping politely.

Nott snorted.

"Malfoy, Victoria," McGonagall said then, and there were more than a few pauses and quick snatches of conversation - _Malfoy twins_? I heard somebody say, and almost rolled my eyes.

Still, it had to be kind of daunting to think about: two Malfoy spawn in the same year. There were probably teachers up at that table wondering if it was like the Slytherin version of the Weasley twins. Perish the thought.

I stepped up to the stool, ignoring the unpleasant severity of McGonagall's gaze. From here I had a brief but very clear view out at the students, all four tables and a dwindling crowd of firsties. I straightened my spine.

Then the sorting hat touched my head and everything went to shit.

"Ah," murmured the little voice in my ear, "another Malfoy! Pity, you'd have done well in Ravenclaw. Slytherin it is, thoug-"

 _EXCUSE ME?_ I didn't want to be in Slytherin!

The hat's little voice made a soft noise of discomfort, probably at the sheer strength of my mental 'voice'. "It's not really about what you want."

I scowled fiercely, reaching one hand up to clutch at the brim of the hat. _You expect me to believe that Granger girl's a Gryffindor? Bullshit! They're all eleven! As if their characters are already so damn fixed? What is it about-_

I stopped partway through my mental rant.

"That fucking _bet_ ," I hissed aloud, and I heard McGonagall's robes shift nearby. I clenched my jaw. Goddammit, Lucius. He had to have known this would happen!

"Ehem. Well, yes," said the hat, having evidently picked up on my thoughts, "that's very possible. But I never renege on a deal - I am a hat of my word, after all! - and you're holding up the line, so-"

I could almost hear it inhale to bellow again.

 _WAIT_ , I thought frantically.

It sighed. "You're only prolonging the inevitable," the hat pointed out.

I ground my teeth. _What deal_?

An offended sniff. "If you must know, Julius Malfoy and I baked the entire repertoire of Helga Hufflepuff's feast day dishes in the 1780s in exchange for his sorting. He was adamant that the rest of his family not 'suffer' the same fate."

I stared at nothing straight ahead of me, utterly baffled. Baking? _Baking?_ The hat made a deal with -

 _You bake_? Was all I could think to wonder.

"Of course! I haven't had anyone to bake with in so long and I quite lack the necessary appendages, you see. Besides, that boy needed to get in touch with the Hufflepuff within. All that misery, just to be in Slytherin instead... there are other great wizards, after all..." There was a pause. Then: "Ah well. Better be -"

"-SLYTHERIN," the hat bellowed its choice while I was too stunned and confused to protest.

There was a pause. Mostly on my side, since I could already hear a polite smattering of applause.

"Miss Malfoy," prompted McGonagall."You may join your brother."

I swallowed. "Sorry," I mumbled, pulling the hat off. I gave it back to her and numbly made my way over to Draco. The applause swelled as I got closer, because it was only even a little bit enthusiastic from the Slytherin table. I sat down next to Goyle.

He grunted something to me, possibly a 'congratulations', and I suppressed a hysterical and ironic giggle.

Oh my god.

"Nott," Mcgonagall called out, but it sounded very distant.

The bloody sorting hat was _rigged_. Rigged by some stupid deal some stupid ancestor had made.

Oh my god, I was a _Slytherin._

* * *

Drop me a comment and let me know if there was anything in particular you liked about this chapter. If not, have a good night.


	8. A Lair Like Home

Nott was sorted into Slytherin, too, and even as I joined in automatically with the clapping my mind was racing. The Sorting hat was rigged. Good god, _why?_

 _Rigged._ I ground my teeth.

I sincerely wanted to take my ire out on Lucius. I knew that was irrational - he may have known but it wasn't as though I'd ever even expressed a preference to him. I was sure that my _not_ wanting to be in Slytherin hadn't even occurred to him. He had been. Narcissa had been. Why would I not want to be? Ugh. _Ugh_. To be fair, it hadn't even occurred to me to seriously express a preference beforehand - not least because I was a shoe in for Ravenclaw!

So instead, of course he'd seen it as a harmless opportunity to get one over on Narcissa, which I suspected didn't happen very often.

And... even if he _had_ warned me, I doubted the Hat would be easily convinced. It had been sticking to its guns on this one for generations now. I wasn't even sure if there was anything I could offer it that would persuade it to renege on its word.

A roar of significantly greater enthusiasm startled me into paying attention. Ah. Harry was being sorted. He really was a celebrity.

"Bloody _Potter_ ," sulked Draco, only just loud enough for me to hear past Goyle's bulk where he was seated between us.

"At least he's not in your House," I murmured in a tone I hoped was soothing. It didn't seem to make him feel any better. Who'd have thought that Draco's ego was so fragile?

I supposed it _was_ a bit of a blow. Harry Potter wasn't just another kid here. He had influence. Even if he wasn't very aware of it, Draco was. It was probably the wizarding equivalent of being dissed by Scarlett Johansson or something. (Less attractive, though. Waaaay less attractive.)

"Buck up," I sighed in a low voice, already sick of trying to understand. Draco leaned forward to turn a furious glower upon me, even as we both clapped automatically for somebody else's sorting.

"You-"

"Seriously," I hissed, cutting him off and leaning forward past Goyle to look him in the face. "Some dumb famous fucker has shit taste. _Why should you care_?"

Draco blinked, more at my language than anything else. Even Goyle blinked. But it made Draco pause.

"Well, I-" Another pause. He looked confused. "I don't."

"Good. All right then." I turned back to the sorting, watching a redhead put the Hat on gingerly. Was that Ron? The Hat roared for Gryffindor, so presumably so.

I clapped politely, but honestly I was mostly busy zoning out completely. I almost missed the end of the ceremony but I was startled by the sudden roar and applause as its end was announced.

Attention turned immediately to the head table. There were actually more people at that table than I'd expected. Some of them were easy to pick - Hagrid, for example, and presumably Filch was the squinty-eyed one with the sinuous and ragged cat curled on his shoulder. Dumbledore was easy to pick as well, not least because he stood to speak.

...but not _most_ because he stood to speak, either. He was also wearing a paisley-print robe in orange, green and purple with odd hints of red at the cuffs, hem and collar, and his hat was sunshine yellow.

"Merlin, my _eyes_ ," muttered somebody a few seats down. I was glad to know that it wasn't just me, at least.

Belatedly, I tuned into what it was Dumbledore was actually saying, just in time to hear: "-Oddment! Tweak!"

Oh, right. Riiight. Somewhere in there would have been the warning about the third floor corridor and the forest, I was sure. Given that I knew exactly what variety of nonsense was going on in both of those locations, I was content to heed those warnings.

"Is he, er, always like that in person?" Zabini asked somebody on his other side.

"Pretty much," agreed that person. His voice was dry and unimpressed, whoever he was.

The food at Hogwarts was not quite as fancy as the food at Malfoy Manor - what was? There were a great many dishes that could be made in huge batches without much trouble: roast meats, breads, steamed and roast vegetables, gravies and sauces and mashes of all sorts. And, _yes_ , peppermint humbugs.

Zabini had settled into the seat next to mine and he seemed bewildered by the sheer number of choices at the feast. Goyle, jammed between Draco and I, was quite the opposite - he picked everything.

I looked out upon this sea of delightful food, my senses all awash with the chatter and excitement of children and felt abruptly but completely exhausted.

I wanted to go home.

Not to Malfoy Manor - to my own mundane little house in Melbourne, where the floors needed cleaning and my bed was a cheap futon. It was quiet and familiar and even if I couldn't sleep I could lay on my face in bed all day and nobody would ask me what was wrong.

I swallowed down some seriously unhappy thoughts about my present circumstances. It'd be okay.

It'd be fine.

I tried reminding myself that I'd be learning magic instead of manually checking for stupid errors in database fields. That did cheer me up a little, actually.

A bread roll hit my plate. I blinked.

Draco was pointedly not looking at me.

I supposed he'd made his point. And, I mean, also: bread rolls were great. I began to pick mine apart. I still wasn't very hungry, but I could probably find it in me to eat more bread.

I kind of wished I'd thought to take a seat next to an older student so I could demand to know who each teacher was. Hooch with her yellow eyes, trim figure and cropped silvery hair was pretty easy to pick, and Flitwick was, you know, absolutely tiny, so that was also obvious. There was a tall woman next to him, though, one with dark skin, killer cheekbones and a sharp nose - and next to her was yet another woman I had no knowledge of, with thick dark hair and poppy-red robes.

Others I could at least guess - the one sitting right next to Hagrid with a brass arm that steamed and hissed when he moved its joints? That pretty much had to be Silvanus Kettleburn, since he was the only teacher up there who was missing at least one limb. And Quirrell's huge purple turban was honestly really ridiculous to look at, but at least it made him easy to identify.

And next to him was Snape, because that was the only person it could be.

I was starting to have my doubts about Harry's perspective, honestly. Snape could not have been much more than thirty, and that was in wizarding years, so he looked _way younger_ than I'd been expecting. He was also just not _that_ ugly. He wasn't going to win any prizes for beauty, but he wasn't, you know, _hideous_. He looked like he badly needed some sunlight and his hair was a greasy mess, sure - but he sure wasn't going out of his way to help himself, either. He dressed like he was going to a very unfashionable funeral, and with sickly skin like that, unrelieved black wouldn't have been my first choice for him. It made him look like a vampire - rather less Lestat and a lot more Dracula.

But then, with the way he was scowling at the Gryffindor table, maybe he intended to look like something dead and mean and frightening. In which case: kudos to Snape, because he'd succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings.

And now I was stuck with him as my primary adult supervision for seven years.

That thought made me wonder if maybe it _was_ worth making a fuss and revealing the Malfoy family's sorting hat conspiracy just to get myself re-sorted.

I rubbed my forehead wearily. Ugh, still probably not - if nothing else, both Narcissa and Lucius would be pissed off with me. Both of them knew I was old enough to understand the potential breadth of consequences.

Besides, there was no real guarantee that I'd even be re-sorted, because in the end the hat was primarily a system to put students into convenient groups for organising their care, movements and classes.

Don't think I hadn't noticed that roughly the same number of students had been sorted into each school house, and there was no way that students expressed arbitrarily assigned traits like 'cleverness' and 'ambition' and 'willingness to do hard work' in equal numbers. That hat might be looking for general tendencies of character, but the hat also served a pretty obvious organisational function.

I sighed.

Fuck it, I'd have to suck it up.

I was sure the feast was delicious, but in the end I mostly just ate my bread roll. If anybody noticed, they didn't say anything.

I was so, so ready to go to bed. I probably wouldn't sleep, but at least I could be on my own. Or... sort of on my own. I glanced down the Slytherin table to where Pansy Parkinson was delicately slicing her roast chicken. I wondered how thick the hangings on those beds would be.

Really, really thick... I hoped.

I'd forgotten one thing, unfortunately: I was completely unprepared for the school song.

It was a bit like an all out assault on the ears, since it had absolutely no tune and everybody shrieked it at whatever tune and pace they preferred, which was... Well...

Next to me, Goyle bellowed it to the tune of _nothing at all_ that I could actually imagine, too slow then too fast but all enthused bellowing.

He wasn't the only one screaming, but he was certainly loud. On the other side, Blaise had picked a cheerful, if unrecognisable tune - but I lost track of it quickly and everything blended into a hollow roar. The wall of noise, almost incomprehensible, was presided over by Dumbledore - dressed in a riot of colours, beaming and singing along like this was his element, a perfect lord of chaos. My stomach twisted and my heart raced.

Worse than all that, people were moving: waving their arms, laughing as they sang, knocking into each other excitably as they tried to out-scream one another. I saw one Gryffindor receive a good-natured shove that almost knocked him into a pie dish. Some enterprising Hufflepuff had started to pound their table in time to a rhythm that matched precisely nothing I could actually hear.

It was terrifying: all moving limbs, warm light, the dull roar of endless sound, shifting bodies - I couldn't pay attention to all that at once. I couldn't even focus on the words streaming before us all.

...I wanted to crawl under the fucking table, not join in.

In the end, I closed my eyes and tried to let it wash over me. It was uncomfortable but it would end soon. There was a vague and nagging guilt that I must seem terribly snobbish - too good for the food, too good for the singing. I wondered if anybody was paying attention enough to notice and really think that?

I cracked my eyes open to see a silvery ribbon of writing slipping and twisting through the air, gleaming in the torchlight while several of the ghosts flickered and glowed as they moved with the thunderous noise. I looked down at the spot where my gilt plate had been and waited for it to be over.

" _Just do your best! We'll do the rest! And learn until our brains all rot!_ "

And then it was over at last - sort of. Over at the farthest table, two stocky and grinning redheads were still singing along to the world's slowest funeral march while Dumbledore gleefully conducted them with his wand. Around him, I was kind of relieved to find that most of the adult staff looked like they were quite happy that the whole ordeal was over.

Dumbledore sent us to bed.

Just like that - I mean, desserts full of sugar, a bit of full-throated screaming, then off to bed with us. It didn't seem very sensible to me, but then I wasn't a teacher. I slipped in beside Draco as we got up to head down to the dungeons.

I didn't even really _like_ Draco, although he was easy enough to understand. But after all that noise and movement, it felt safe to have somebody familiar to walk beside.

Draco took one look at me. "If you're going to vomit, do it on Crabbe and not me," he instructed.

It took a moment, but Crabbe looked a bit offended.

"I'm not going to throw up," I assured him, and he nodded, but I noticed he kept a respectful distance from me anyway.

We followed a prefect down several long and winding sets of stairs. The castle was just as strange and complex as I'd expected, and all of our movements were watched by the dark staring eyes of portraits who murmured quietly as we passed.

" _Grata domum_ ," said the prefect at an innocent-looking patch of stone wall, and the stones rolled and peeled away, melted into one another, to reveal the Slytherin common room. She gave us a conspirational smile.

Draco elbowed me, and I scowled at him and stepped away from his pointy extremities.

He rolled his eyes, but didn't try to touch me again. Instead, he murmured: "What's that mean?"

"No idea," I said back, just as quietly.

The look he gave me was very dubious. Pushy little brat.

I shook my head and declined to try explaining the complexities of Latin grammatical forms and context. It meant - well, probably something about freedom, maybe freedom of entry, _gratus, gratis, grata_... but I wasn't sure enough to say it, so I just shrugged.

"Why do you even spend so much time studying if you're not learning anything?" Draco sniped.

"A mystery for the ages," I murmured, moving forward with the little knot of Slytherin first years as we were allowed entry.

The common room was best described as 'expensive antique store meets gothic fantasy aesthetic': it was large, with high vaulted ceilings, stone walls and a huge cavernous fireplace on one side. The stone floor was covered with heavy, patterned rugs and the lighting came from small, warm sources - lamps, many a wall sconce, floating candles - all around the room. Outside the high windows was absolutely black, and I wondered what it looked out on when it was light out - I thought I remembered something about the lake, but it seemed like the water pressure would make that very difficult.

Still. Magic, I supposed.

"Girls this way, please," said one of the fifth year prefects and I wondered for half a second what people who weren't comfortable with binary genders did when confronted with this problem. Probably got bullied like mad, I supposed, waving vaguely at Draco and following the others.

The dorm was actually a bit bigger than I was expecting, but it did have to house five big four-poster beds. The walls were grey and stone, and the ceiling was arched with those pointed gothic arches. The beds were large and had green linens, green hangings... green pillowcases... I imagined I'd be quite sick of green by the time I was done with the school term.

My trunk had been delivered to the foot of one of the beds, although this one was between two others. I eyed the one bed jammed into the corner at the back and wondered who had gotten that isolated little space.

"Breakfast begins at six," said the prefect who led us there. I'd missed her name earlier - Gemma or Jenna or something. "Classes are at eight thirty. Tomorrow morning you'll be receiving your class schedules by eight, so you need to be down in the Great Hall before then. Professor Snape's kind of a stickler for punctuality, so don't be late, okay?"

I wrinkled my nose. I had no doubt that Professor Snape would be an absolute martinet as a teacher, and I wasn't looking forward to extended contact with him.

But actually -

"Is there any chance of getting a map?" I asked, thinking about the winding stairs and corridors.

There was a pause.

"Sorry, I think I missed your name," she said, peering at me over the top of a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. They were a bit heavy, but they looked rather well on her.

"Malfoy."

"Oh, right. I should have picked you from the accent! Well, not really, sorry. Maps of Hogwarts aren't reliable," the prefect explained, looking faintly exasperated. "It doesn't happen _that_ often, but sometimes whole floors move and corridors lead places you don't expect. There most recent map I've ever found is from eighty-two and it's wrong now, so I recommend asking a portrait. There's probably a self-updating map out there somewhere, but with a big enchantment like that on it I reckon you're never getting it out of the library... which means finding the library, of course. Still, you could ask Pince."

I nodded slowly. How inconvenient. I was going to get lost so often.

"How do we know the portraits are telling us the right directions?" asked another girl. This one was tall for her age, with big shoulders, a heavy jaw and dark hair that lay thick and woolen over her shoulders.

Our prefect sighed. " _Most_ of them tell the truth. But, look, there's some leeway for students getting lost in the first week or so, so don't worry about it too much. Aside from that, I'm meant to tell you that everybody's got to be back in their common room by ten. Lights out is _meant_ to be ten for the first years as well, but honestly nobody will enforce that. I don't really care what time you go to bed, but if you're asleep in class the next day that's your look-out. Understood?"

We nodded.

"Any more questions?"

"Do we have to sleep in the beds where our things are?" That was Pansy, peering in distaste at her trunk, which had been delivered to a bed in the far corner, well away from the door, and which was bracketed by solid stone walls.

"If you can find someone to swap, I don't mind," shrugged the prefect.

"I'll swap with you," I said immediately, looking longingly at that cozy corner. The bed given to me was exposed and felt like it was very out in the open.

Besides Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode, there were two more girls in my dorm: Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass.

Greengrass was blonde in that shocking, platinum way Draco was blond, with extremely blue eyes and cupid's-bow lips. I watched her remove her shoes and carefully put them next to one another at the foot of her bed, then unbraid and rebraid her long hair so it wouldn't knot while she slept.

Davis, on the other hand, was a sweet-faced, coffee-skinned girl with nut-brown hair. She dove upon her bed, tested the bounce of the mattress, and then immediately moved to put up a Quidditch poster. The Harpies, I supposed, glancing at the fierce-looking women zooming by on their brooms.

I looked to see what the others were doing. Bulstrode was putting a series of fiction novels on the shelves that jutted from the wall above each bed, and Pansy was... Ah, Pansy was perched with a hard cover book on her knees, using it to lean a slip of parchment upon when writing something. A letter, maybe.

I peered into my trunk, confirmed that I knew where my uniform for tomorrow was and that my books were easily accessible, and decided that any actual unpacking could wait.

I crawled onto my new bed and pulled the hangings firmly closed after me. They weren't quite heavy enough to block out the light, but that was all right. I could figure out how to make them light-and-sound-proof later, if I needed to - and I'd probably need to, eventually.

I didn't sleep, because of _course_ I didn't sleep. Exhaustion cast its spell, though, and it was easy enough to lay in weary silence. I lay on top of the covers, tiredly listening to the shifting, rustling, murmuring sounds of the other people in my dorm room. I'd have to get used to living with them, and try to learn to feel safe and calm with them in the room. It seemed like there wouldn't be a lot of occasion to be properly alone in the coming days.

"Is she asleep?" somebody asked quietly some minutes later.

"Yes, probably." That was definitely Pansy. She had a distinctive voice, posh and drawling even when she wasn't really trying to sound superior. "Funny thing, isn't she? She looks nothing like a Malfoy."

"She looks a bit like the ones in the old pictures at father's cousin's house," offered a soft, light voice. It took me a moment to realise that was actually Bulstrode speaking. It was strange to think she had such a delicate voice, but she was the only one of them whose cousin once removed had been a part of my family.

"I guess."

A pause, and then, "She's not very pretty, though, is she?" murmured somebody else.

I stifled a snort. I tried to remember being subject to the whims of young girls from my own youth but honestly it was all a bit of a blur - by the time I'd been twelve in my actual real life, I'd already had significant and unmanaged mental health problems.

"There are more important things than being pretty," Pansy said sharply. "Breeding, for example."

Which meant that the 'someone' commenting on my looks had to have been Davis - because she was the only half blood in the room. The others were all members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight in their own right, and wouldn't abide such a casual insult.

"Yeah... There _are_ more important things. I mean, I guess she can change her looks, but your personality's here to stay," mused Davis, and then there was the _thump_ of somebody's trunk being closed heavily and the soft swish of swinging hangings.

"That was really insupportably rude," Pansy muttered.

"Don't upset yourself," said a new voice. Greengrass, I assumed. "She doesn't know any better; subsequently she's just proving your point."

Pansy made an annoyed _tsk_ in the back of her throat, and I heard what I thought were her flouncing footsteps through the room. "Do you think we're going to have to share classes with the Gryffindors?" she asked then, much more cheerfully. "Mother says it's traditional."

"I heard that, too..."

With a sigh, I shoved the pillow over my head. It didn't block out the chattering voices, but it dulled them.

While the girls spoke and unpacked books and nicknacks, I wondered what I'd have felt like had I been in the Ravenclaw dorms instead - probably, I allowed, I'd have felt pretty similarly.

The surroundings were unfamiliar and the people were extremely young - and I was expected to adhere to standards of behaviour that I wasn't sure I could actually meet. I wasn't used to living with a lot of structure, and the Malfoys left me to my own devices much of the time.

I felt a bit... trapped.

It was strange to feel trapped in such a huge, sprawling castle.

It wasn't that much later that Greengrass, Bulstrode and Parkinson all decided to get some sleep, and once they'd blown out th lights and crawled into their beds I let the pillow relax over my ears and stared up at the dimly dipped bed canopy above. The girls' breathing was soft and easy in the dark.

I yawned, rolled over and went to sleep.

I dreamt a clown wanted to cut my head open to retrieve the lime pie inside my skull, and then I woke up confused and disoriented in the dark. And cold. It was astonishingly cold, even underneath the heavy blankets. I shivered and wrapped myself up more firmly. I'd have to seriously practice those warming spells.

It was two in the morning, which meant I'd gotten almost four hours of sleep. Pretty good, really. I cracked an enormous yawn, then rifled through my trunk to find some parchment paper and a quill.

 _Dear Narcissa_ , I wrote, and then hesitated. It was easier to be open with somebody in writing, when there was no face, no voice, no touch. Nothing alarming. I was still really uncomfortable with writing 'Dear', and I looked at the word for a few long moments. There weren't a lot of alternatives, really - everything else seemed pretty formal and distant, which she wouldn't appreciate.

I chewed my bottom lip and kept going. What could I tell her to make any note worth sending?

 _Despite your insistence, I'm still not entirely sold on the value of tradition. It seems like that whole train ride could have been prevented and that I wouldn't suffer much for its loss._

 _I was sorted into Slytherin. Lucius accounted for variables I was unaware of, and which presumably you were also unaware of. I suppose that's as fair a way of winning a bet as any. I'd apologise, but I really had no choice in the matter._

That was pretty much all I had to say at the moment, and it didn't really seem like enough to bother sending a letter. Despite the request for correspondence, there was very little that had actually happened since I'd left them at the station, aside from my disastrous sorting.

I tapped my fingers on the parchment for a second, then blew gently on the ink to dry it and slipped it inside the cover of _1001 Magical Plants and Fungi_ for safekeeping. I could add to it later in the day, perhaps after a couple of classes or something. It seemed as good a plan as any.

It was still absurdly early in the morning, and with no sprawling library to wander to - even if I was inclined toward sneaking out, which I was not, I had no idea where I might even find the library, which was sort of an issue when one considered that behind at least one innocuous door in this place was a slavering, murderous three-headed dog. Who the hell knew what else was in this castle?

Hmm.

Slowly, I smiled. Just a little smile. And then after a second, I pulled out another sheet of parchment and began to write...

* * *

I was up and dressed before the sun - well before the sun, since the skies seemed to be darker than I was used to in this part of the world - but since I wasn't a complete sadist I didn't try waking up the other girls in my dorm. They probably slept like normal human beings.

Instead I crept down into the common room with a copy of _A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_ and settled beside the fire. Beside the fire - rather close, in fact - seemed to be the only warm place in this entire goddamn castle. Why was it so cold? Did the people here just not have any nerves left in their skin?

"Are you seriously up at -" a pause while I _jumped,_ "-five o'clock in the morning?"

The surprise didn't last long, but when I turned I still had one hand laid unsteadily over my chest.

The person who'd spoken was a tall, surprisingly built kid with coarse dark curls and grey eyes. His robes weren't the regular school uniform - brighter green, white instead of silver, and significantly more fitted. Huh. Were those Quidditch robes, then?

"Um... er, yes?" I said. Then I stopped as a thought occurred to me. "Was I not supposed to be?"

"Firstie, right?" He frowned. "You can be in the common room whenever you want. It's just _five o'clock_."

"Well," I said, "you're up."

"I," he raised his eyebrows significantly, "have a Quidditch practice to prepare."

"So you're occupied. Nice." I shrugged. "I'm reading a book?"

His expression did not clear. If anything it seemed like I'd only confused him more. I waved the book vaguely at him to illustrate.

"Okay," he said finally. "You know what, good job. You have fun with that." And then he shook his head and disappeared for half an hour - and when he returned he was carrying two buckets in each hand, slopping their water gently onto the the floors as he went.

I watched, peering curiously over my book as he went. He smiled when he noticed. " _Tempus_. Five forty, right? The team has to be up by a quarter to six, or I'll _get_ them up."

I swallowed, and decided that I would not ever try out for the Quidditch team. I didn't even like the normal level of hideous cold that seemed to permeate the stones. Adding that to lake water - for that was definitely what it was - made me feel preemptively queasy. Gross. Gross and, and _dirty_ and. Ew.

"I suppose they know they're supposed to be up for practice," I said uneasily, watching the silvery figures of the student's time telling charm.

"Of course," said the mad Quidditch person. "You've got to give them a fighting chance."

At sixteen minutes to six, a fluffy-haired third year tumbled out from the steps toward the boys' dorms. He had very dark skin and hair, but his eyes were a shocking green. He wasn't fully dressed, but he seemed to have most of his robes at least slung over his arm.

"Flint, it's the first bloody day," he rasped, eyeing the buckets.

"Cass, Cass, Cass... you're up, so what are you complaining about?" grinned Flint.

Flint, Flint... Hm, old pureblood family, I thought, and then - oh, _Marcus_ Flint. I spared him a second glance. He did not, in fact, look like he had troll blood. But then neither did Hagrid, and Draco had commented something about that too, hadn't he? Perhaps it was a common insult?

"Cassius. _Cas-si-us_. It's not a hard name."

"Caaaassss," drawled Flint.

I shook my head, staring blankly at the page of my text book while the two descended into cheerful bickering. 'Cass', as he was apparently known to everybody except himself, was not somebody I could remember having heard of.

"Time's up," said Flint cheerfully, and he delegated two buckets to 'Cass'.

Both of them ascended the steps to the boys' dorms, and from there I was completely unsurprised to hear a sudden, enraged bellow: " _WARRINGTON!"_

I clutched my book tightly and got to my feet. It was basically six (...ish), and supposedly the elves began serving breakfast around then. I was sure nobody would mind too much if I headed down to the table early. Then I could just drink tea and read my book until somebody came to give us our schedules, right?

It sounded like a solid plan, because it would likely take a good while for me to find the Great Hall anyway, and by then I'd be certain to get a cup of tea somewhere. That, at least, _had_ to be a benefit of being in the UK - everywhere would give me tea. Probably shit tea, but still.

I was peering through the hole in the wall where the corridor became the Slytherin common room when somebody grabbed my arm.

"Nooope," said a voice in my ear.

"Shit!" I yelped. I slammed the heel of my foot upon somebody's instep and my book went flying.

"Ow! _Ow_ , shit! I was just joking, Merlin -"

I whirled. " _Don't grab me_ ," I snarled, balling my hands into fists.

"Alright, alright." He held up his hands, both of them, in a gesture for peace, and -

And they were sopping wet. My eyes moved from his soaked sleeves over the shoulders of what were definitely pyjamas, and up to his face. His face was younger than I'd been expecting- thirteen or fourteen, I thought, although he was big for his age. He had a truly unfortunate nose, long and ratlike, and big dark eyes beneath his sandy hair.

No wonder I hadn't picked him out of the noise and movement in the common room. He was already part of that nonsense!

I scowled, leaning down to collect my book. "If your foot's bruised, you deserve it," I informed him.

"Cold," he said, but he was grinning.

"Derrick!" Flint bellowed. "If you're not in your robes in three minutes I'm refilling the bucket!"

"Can't have wee ickle firsties getting lost in the halls, Captain," called my very wet companion back over his shoulder, and he reached out for my arm again.

Oh my god, what, did I look like a fucking teddy bear? I slapped his hand, hard, with a _crack_ that was surprisingly loud between the stone walls.

If anything, he just smiled _harder_. What was wrong with these people?

" _Ouch_ , alright. Merlin, what a little viper you are. Just wait for the rest of us - we'll take you down to breakfast and you can... read your transfigurations text in peace." A pause. "The hat _did_ sort you into Slytherin, right?" he wondered, narrowing his eyes. "You're not a lost Ravenclaw or something, yeah?"

"DERRICK!"

"Coming, coming!"

And he was gone, leaving me confused and frazzled and slightly damp in one arm.

Needless to say, given a start like that, it did _not_ turn out to be the quiet, peaceful morning I'd envisioned.

* * *

This chapter is a lot of character introductions and stuff, so I know it's probably pretty hard reading in some ways. As always, if there was something you liked don't hesitate to let me know in a comment. Otherwise, have a good morning.


	9. Day One

The corridors went past in a blur.

"-one-eyed witch, there's a secret corridor behind there, you can use it to get past Filch-"

I swung around, but all I could catch was the shape of a sculpted hood. "One-eyed-?"

"-one's a portrait of some mudblood queen of England from the fourteen hundreds, 'course, they didn't understand blood purity as well back then so-"

"Who? Which Queen? Uh. Sorry, Your Majesty-" crap, was it even 'your majesty' for the wife of the king? I got a brief look at a disdainful, pale face and a - oh, hey, was that a wimple? -before Warrington tugged me along by one arm.

Somehow I'd begun my first morning at Hogwarts underneath the heavy arm of Cassius Warrington, listening to him and Peregrine ("Pen") Derrick bicker. I was propelled both by their superior strength and by the pace of their sniping as they each pretended to be a competent guide of Hogwarts to the _ickle wee firstie._

Well, Warrington called me 'ickle wee firstie'. Derrick called me all sorts of things, punctuated by by a great deal of whining. He kept turning to Flint and complaining that I had broken his foot.

"I just don't think I can handle practice today," he said in an attitude of exaggerated sadness, "my foot's just-"

"Not required for flying, luckily," Flint drawled. He was the biggest of them all, and seemed to keep their pace at a lazy stroll. I was very much struggling to keep up. But then, I was twelve; he was fifteen or sixteen and huge.

"My starts will be terrible," Derrick lamented. "And everybody performs worse when they're in _constant, unrelenting agony_ -"

"If you don't shut up about your bloody foot I've got a severing charm with your name on it," said one of the beaters. "And then you'l know all about agony." She was the only girl on the team, a tall, raw-boned kid of thirteen or fourteen years. She was wiry as hell, dark hair caught severely in a high bun, with skin as pale as funeral lilies. I hadn't caught her name yet, but she seemed ...very harsh.

Derrick skipped around the obstacle Warrington presented, putting him- and I - firmly between the girl and his own skin. Probably wise, I thought, glancing nervously at her expression.

She wouldn't really attack us, would she? They resorted to hexes pretty fast in the books... I wondered why I couldn't have asked Lucius about a shielding charm instead of learning new hexes. That would have been so much more sensible.

The bickering went on, as did the occasional threat of terrible injury. I suspected that they were all pretty friendly, and that exchanging insults was some kind of ritual display of affection - but for me as an outsider, it was pretty hard to tell how close they were and whether or not their hostility was genuine. By the time we made it within sight of the Great Hall I was already exhausted and I hadn't even started my day yet.

"She's not even sorry," Derrick went on in apparent wonderment. "You're a cold, cruel woman, little viper."

Instinct was to turn and say 'If I agree with you will you just fuck off already?' but, well: one, we were almost in the Great Hall and I was sure food would distract him; two, there was no call to antagonise an upperclassman while I was surrounded by his friends; three, Warrington was trapping my wand-arm against his side so if somebody did try to hurt me I was in trouble; and four, I was actually an adult and I was trying not to be impatient with the stupid antics of a thirteen year old. I just had to keep reminding myself.

The Great Hall revealed that the sky outside was almost completely black with only dull hints of a dark periwinkle around the edges. It was unwelcoming.

"Hey, are you even listening to me? Hey, firstie!"

I recoiled.

"Get out of her _face_ , Pen!" snapped Warrington, rolling his eyes.

Derrick withdrew in an agony of offence, mostly feigned. "Well, if she wasn't such a _cruel, heartless_ -"

"Merlin's pants, Pen. She's shaking, are you happy now?"

I decided not to mention that I was shaking because I was freezing. Even the darkest winter mornings in Melbourne rarely fell below about four degrees. I was pretty sure that four degrees was _steaming_ here.

"Aww, I didn't mean to upset you, I'm just joking-"

"Well, maybe you could _stop_?"

"Does it look like I'm talking to you, Cass?"

I ducked out from under Warrington's arm as soon as he was distracted again by bickering and made a beeline to the Slytherin table in the hopes of getting myself a cup of tea.

"Hey, where are you going?"

Dear god they were _so noisy_.

There was a clatter of footsteps and - "Oh, leave her alone," sighed the girl, standing pointedly halfway between Warrington, Derrick and the long Slytherin table that I'd quickly put between us. I breathed a sigh of relief and internally decided that of all of them, she seemed okay. Harsh, yeah. But okay.

There were candle lights that had come up when we made it into the Hall, and now they shone warmly on the contents of the breakfast table - a glint on glass and metal, a lustrous shine on the surface of a drink. It was pretty to have a breakfast laid out by candlelight but also a little weird - it made me feel rather like getting up for a really early plane flight and calling for a cab in the dark, you know?

Other than that, though, the most apparent thing was that these people really liked their juice. Pumpkin juice was a little odd but at least something I'd expected, but the array of other juices at the breakfast table was honestly a little baffling to me. There was orange and apple and some kind of grape, but also guava, black currant, cherry, raspberry and lemon, grapefruit and, strangely, acai. I thought acai was like a 2010s-pretentious-health thing, but apparently it was also a juice people drank at Hogwarts. Go figure.

I squinted at the jugs of sweet-smelling juices. Cold. Cold and sweet. Didn't they know that fruit juices were full of sugar and way less nutritious than actual fruit would have been? I sniffed. I wasn't interested. Cautiously I reached past them for the single and rather forlorn-looking teapot.

Around me, the Quidditch team arrived with minimum fanfare and maximum devouring. I tried to ignore them completely in favour of the teapot.

The tea was already brewing, and from the looks of the contents of the pot it was made mostly of fannings and dust, the kind of low-grade tea you'd not be caught dead with at the Malfoy house. Still, it'd be strong. I put some milk and a little honey in it to cover the bitterness and offset the strength. Hey, this was a boarding school. There was no point whining about the quality of the tea.

...although now that _I_ was a spoilt Malfoy brat, maybe I could get one of my parents to send me some? I seemed to recall Draco receiving packages of sweets from his family in the books...

Hmm. In order to broach that topic I'd have to actually finish and send my letter to Narcissa. Still, it was worth considering.

I left the pot in the middle of the table for anyone else, although judging by the bickering taking place among the juices there weren't likely to be that many takers.

Then I settled back, torn between watching the feeding frenzy and actually reading my text book. Slipping away with my tea cup was definitely an option, but I had the distinct sense that...

As I watched, somebody walloped Warrington in the face and he turned with an enraged bellow, robes flying behind him.

Yeah...

Nope. Nevermind.

Discretion being the better part of valour, I picked up an apple and then fled with my book bag over my shoulder and my tail between my legs. The Slytherin Quidditch team was distracted, so if anybody noticed they didn't try to stop me.

The castle was something of a maze to me. Many of the halls and corridors seemed pretty similar, and unless I knew the paintings well I was going to get lost over and over. So while I had the few hours that morning - two, by my measure, assuming I wanted to be back in time to get my class schedule (um, _yes_ ) - I decided to try familiarising myself with the parts I'd need most. If I got turned about, I'd be able to ask a portrait... and if I didn't believe in a portrait's good character, I could ask several. It seemed reasonable enough.

The Hogwarts corridors were full of weird and cool things. The suits of armour were really interesting because they in no way could have dated to the castle's original era. Plate armour like these freestanding suits was a Renaissance thing, mostly, and to my knowledge the castle was meant to have been built in some vague late antiquity period.

I knew less about tapestries. The idea of a tapestry was a very old one, and it wasn't as easy to pinpoint a time period as the armour - and, well, it wasn't like I could judge the colours on a magical tapestry the same way as I might with a muggle one. They were bright though, vivid and beautiful, with scenes from what could have been popular stories or might just as easily have been wizarding history. There was so much I didn't know about this world, and it was simultaneously frustrating and exciting.

I ended up in the Hogwarts trophy room, peering into a case.

Inside was the Special Award for Services to the School awarded to Tom Riddle in 1942. It looked innocuous, and I thought that was probably why it felt so ominous to see it. Looking at it, you'd never know...

I swallowed and clutched my tea cup tightly. There wasn't any tea in it anymore, but I was holding onto it to return it to the Great Hall...

...which was when I realised that I had twenty minutes to find my way back to the Great Hall, and Hogwarts was big. Really big. How was I going to get back there on time? I bit my lip. Maybe one of the portraits would be kind enough to walk me there? "...Shit," I muttered.

" _Mmmrr_ ," said a voice out of nowhere, startling me. I peered down.

I melted.

It was a ragged, bandy-legged cat with huge yellow eyes.

"Aww," I said, carefully looking at its paws instead of in its eyes. Its claws needed a trim. "Hello." And then I dissolved into baby talk and cooing. "Look at you. What's your name, baby?"

It gave me a very mistrustful look at cautiously came closer. I slitted my eyes at it and made a soft, stupid little meowing noise. "Come on baby, I bet you're so soft."

It edged closer, peering thoughtfully at my hand, and then butted its head into my knuckles.

Victory! I cooed helplessly. "What a precious little thing you are, aww, yes you are. Are you lost, kitty?" Probably not, really - plenty of students must have brought cats to school, and they doubtless knew their way around better than I did.

The cat was a dusty diluted tortoiseshell, and distinctly ugly - but ugly in the way of small, purring cats, which was just not really very repellant. She - as a tortie, she almost certainly was female - rubbed her face on me, my book bag, my shoes, my hands...

And then I'd somehow spent ten minutes playing with a stranger's cat and I was now almost definitely late.

I sighed. "Aw, precious thing," I said with a last scritch behind her jaw, and she stretched her neck out for me, warm and soft-furred and so terribly sweet. "I have to find the Great Hall and then probably get yelled at. I've got to get going."

She gave me huge yellow eyes, shoved herself away from my hand, meowed loudly and slunk out the door without further commentary.

...huh.

Well. That was cats for you. I sighed and prepared myself to talk to another bored and desperately lonely portrai-

The cat stuck her head back around the door and gave another sharp, ragged meow.

I blinked.

Her tail ticked impatiently.

...Well, then.

I followed.

I was back outside the doors to the Great Hall by seven fifty-six.

"Mrow," said the cat, and rubbed herself shamelessly around my shins.

"You," I told her, reaching down to rub the side of her face where she kept her scent glands, "are a very good, clever girl. Yes you are. _Yesyouare_."

She didn't have a collar, so I had nothing to call her, but I was pretty sure now that she was somebody's familiar. She seemed too clever to be otherwise. "Thank you, precious thing," I said at last, and slunk into the Great Hall with about three minutes to spare.

I found my seat at the Slytherin table, which was now crowded with students. It was probably a good thing that I'd already gotten down a cup of tea and a piece of fruit. Across from my spot was Daphne Greengrass, looking starched and carefully presented for her first day.

As soon as my butt hit the cushion, there was a scraping next to me and an already-too-fucking-familiar voice: "'Scuze me, thank you, let me just- here we are," and a hand landed upon my shoulder. "Slipped away from us, did you, viper? I think Flint wanted you to come to practice."

I doubted that very much. _Derrick_ might have wanted me to come to practice, for reasons that remained unclear to me, but Flint? I glanced his way down the table, but he was busy saying something to another sixth year. From the smile on his face it wasn't anything pleasant.

"Don't grab me," I murmured. I reached up and removed his hand from my shoulder with both of my own. Then, gently, I planted it on the table.

I could feel him staring at me. Then, a second later, just as I was contemplating reaching forward to grab the tea pot again, he put his hand back on my shoulder.

It wasn't actually creepy or sexual or - anything, really. He was just thirteen or fourteen and, I assumed, easily amused by making a nuisance of himself. Kids had definitely done that sort of stupid stuff when I was younger, too, I was sure of it... although maybe more nine and ten year olds than people this age? I wasn't sure.

I turned my gaze toward him. "You're making me uncomfortable. Stop touching me."

"Morganna's tits, you're _so cold_ ," he said, delighted.

"And you're still touching me," I pointed out. I hated confrontations like this, because I never knew where to go from here. Did I ask somebody for help? Smack him? Lecture him about the importance of respecting others' boundaries? I remained uncertainly still.

"Oh, look," drawled a much more welcome voice from behind us. "Someone's in my seat. Take care of that, would you?"

"Hey!" I jolted a little when Derrick was unceremoniously detached and shoved on his way.

It was all done very neatly, with Crabbe and Goyle physically hauling Derrick away while Draco settled into his vacated seat. Derrick might have been two years older, but there were two of them - and they were huge. Unless he wanted to draw his wand, there wasn't really a lot he could do.

The spot on my other side was swiftly taken, and Crabbe took the seat on Draco's far side. I waved, but he was scowling belligerently at everybody and might not have noticed.

"Good morning, Draco - ah, and Goyle, too," I said, hiding my smile behind my empty tea cup. As much as I didn't enjoy an excess of company, it was... well, it was sort of nice, having them come out of nowhere to help like that. I'd have to remember to do the same for Draco at some point - which was doubtless what he was expecting, and why he'd done it in the first place.

Draco was comforting like that. His motives always led firmly back to his own interest, and I could handle that.

"Mornin'," grunted Goyle, evidently still half asleep.

Draco ignored my greeting, because he was watching Derrick. It wasn't a friendly look. After a second, though, his eyebrows rose and he shot me a look that was astonishingly smug. "Goyle, I think it'd be for the best if you stay with Victoria."

Oh, for fuck's sake. All gratitude, such as it had even been, melted right out of my being. Of course he thought this was an opportune moment to hand off one of his 'friends' to me.

Goyle looked up, frowned at Draco and then glanced at me. "All right," he said slowly.

I was tempted to tell Draco to keep Goyle to himself, but I thought that might make him feel bad, and... well, I had told him I'd take the two of them off his hands sometimes...

"Be quiet."

Silence dropped like a cloak around the Slytherin table.

I hadn't seen Snape approach, but he certainly had the knack for getting everyone's attention when he wanted it. He was tall enough to loom - he'd have been tall enough to loom over me even when I was grown, actually - and he made it work for him, peering right down his overlarge nose at us all.

Across the table and a few seats over, Pansy sat straighter, smiling winsomely.

I glanced around and saw that the other tables seemed to be getting a similar chat with their Heads of Houses. Flitwick, I noticed, was standing upon a chair. It didn't seem to bother the Ravenclaws in the slightest.

...the Ravenclaw table looked really inviting.

I would have bet there weren't any Derricks in Ravenclaw.

Snape was talking to us, though. And I was, for better or for worse, a Slytherin, so I returned my attention to him.

"I am pleased to see you all here on time. First years," he added, with a note of disdain in his voice, "I am Severus Snape. You will address me as Professor Snape. I am the head of Slytherin house here at Hogwarts, so in the event that you must speak to a teacher about a problem, my office is always open to you. However," and here his voice dropped, soft and ominous, and his expression turned fierce, "my time is valuable. Your prefects will have spoken to you yesterday evening, so you will be aware of who they are. They are there to assist you with complaints of homesickness, arguments among your peers and homework difficulties. I advise you to use what little judgement you may be presumed to have. Do not waste my time."

Then he lifted his gaze and pretty much everybody breathed a sigh of relief.

It didn't take a genius to read between the lines there. Snape was obligated to help the students in his house, but on account of how very much he didn't want to, he'd chosen to delegate.

...That was probably a lot fairer on the students in the long run, really.

"As you are no doubt already aware, there are rules at Hogwarts. The consequences of breaking those rules are detentions and the loss of House points," and here he nodded toward the huge hourglasses set against the stone wall. They were more or less equal right then. "In severe cases, students will be expelled."

Riiiight. Sure they would.

I thought back to the Special Award languishing in the trophy case. Hagrid's was the only expulsion I could think of, and since plenty of people seemed to get away with siccing lethal magical creatures upon one another in this school, I had to suspect that it had more to do with him being a half-giant than with his actual behaviour. Pure conjecture, of course, but I was pretty sure I was right.

"Your schedules have been prepared," he went on, gesturing with his wand. A slip of paper dropped to the table in front of me. "Third years, if you have concerns about electives in your schedules, I will be available over the lunch hour. Otherwise, if there are any questions, I advise you to seek out your prefects."

He disappeared in a billowing whirl of black fabric.

"Is he always that friendly?" muttered Davis from several seats away.

"Pretty much," said Warrington, who'd claimed the spot next to her.

Goyle was staring in confusion after Snape's retreating form. I hesitated, but in the end he'd be my problem.

"Goyle?"

He blinked in my direction. His heavy brow furrowed. The paper with his schedule was crumpling beneath his thick fingers.

"He's just trying to make sure we know not to bother him, and that if we get caught breaking the rules we'll get in trouble. What've we got first?"

He looked at his schedule and hesitated. "History," he said, although it honestly sounded like he was sounding the word out. Maybe he wasn't a strong reader? Well, he was eleven. There were plenty of kids who weren't good readers at eleven.

I tuned out the steadily rising sound of voices. Hmm. History of Magic first. Well, it was history. I knew it was supposed to be boring in the books, but maybe that was because Harry wan't a good student. I, personally, really liked learning about history. How bad could it be?

The answer was: bad. Really bad.

We made our way to the classroom in the wake of a sixth year prefect who had a spare period first up and had volunteered to show us there. It was an older style of classroom: wooden chairs, wooden desks. No projectors or computers in sight, just a chalkboard and dust.

I went to take a seat.

"No," said Draco, fluttering one hand like he was going to grab me and then snatching my bag and taking it hostage instead. "Not in the front row, nobody sits in the front row-"

I blinked. I'd gone through my university degree sitting in the front row, usually at a corner near the door. Being close made it easier to read the expression on the lecturer's face and it was a great position for shooting out of your seat and mercilessly accosting a teacher before they could flee the room once the lecture was over.

"All right." I followed Draco obediently. It wasn't a big enough room to make much difference.

Professor Binns was a pearly-white sort of colour and he could walk through objects, and that was legitimately the best part of his class.

The class itself was almost tragic. I wasn't sure if maybe Harry had no reference point for what a half-decent history class was like, but he had by no means done the class justice by calling it merely soporific. It was so much worse.

Binns immediately launched into a lecture about the importance of goblins. Goblins were very important, if you asked Binns - more important, evidently, than the purpose of his course or explaining how it would progress. He didn't try very hard to ensure we understood him, either. He started in the middle of one of the many conflicts, referred to the statute of secrecy as 'the statute' and casually threw around the names of goblins as though we'd recognise them - which I, at least, certainly didn't. Despite bringing up the 17th century Statute of Secrecy, at some point Binns' droning lecture landed us in the 9th century, a fact I only even caught because there was a mention of 'Ruodhaid, abbess of Faremoutiers', being the magically gifted bastard of a non-magical lord - the man himself was referred to as 'a muggle king' and glossed right over.

It was almost a half hour before I stopped trying to take notes in a haze of muddled confusion. It was hard to follow from one part of the lecture to the next.

When I did, I looked around to discover only Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass clinging to the edges of comprehension with grim determination. Everybody else was either dozing or squinting in baffled horror at the teacher.

I skipped to a new page and decided to stick to broad topics for notes, deciding that I could look them up later and try to make heads or tails of what was going on. It was not as useful as one might have thought. At a quarter to the hour all I had was:

 _\- I think this is all in Europe_

 _\- I hope this is all in Europe_

 _\- is that Charlemagne's kid? - catholic witches? (!)_

 _\- impact of statute of secrecy on goblins (C17th)_

 _\- Urg the Unclean - C18th - village pond?_

 _\- wand legislation comes in where?_

It was about two minutes before the end of the class that I realised Binns had no intention of letting any student get a word in edgewise. I looked around, but the general mood seemed to be one of despairing boredom. Even Zabini had succumbed and was staring in forlorn confusion at his hands, and Greengrass was tapping her fingers restlessly upon her desk.

Fuck it. I raised my hand.

Binns either did not notice or did not care.

"Excuse me," I said, loudly enough that Goyle jerked awake next to me. Draco looked like public decorum was all that was preventing him from tackling me to stop me prolonging our nightmare class.

Binns finally seemed to notice me. Or perhaps he realised he had actual students. Hard to say. "Miss... Black?" he said, sounding very vague indeed.

You know what? That was close enough. "Is there a list of supplementary readings for this class?"

Whoever was sitting right behind me made a strangled noise of protest.

"...No," said Binns, looking bemused.

"Might you consider compiling some recommendations?"

He looked at me.

I looked back.

We... looked. It went on for a few moments.

Then the clock chimed the hour.

"Ten and a quarter inches on goblins by next class," he said vaguely, and then: "Dismissed."

There was chaos as students began scrambling to get out.

I noted our homework, which was apparently 'on goblins', on my notes and when I looked up once more Binns had vanished.

...Um.

I guessed that was a 'no' on the reading list, then.

* * *

"I cannot believe you," hissed Draco, minutes later.

Hogwarts' corridors were loud and full of people, students pushing and yelling over one another as they tried to get to their next classes. "-Bludger to the face!" somebody yelled near my left ear, and I twitched, turning to see who it was, but they were already lost in the ebb and flow of everyone around us. I jumped as, with a bang, a cloud of sparkling green smoke puffed into existence, settling upon people's hair and clothes indiscriminately.

"I wasn't asking for extra reading for everyone, I just want to understand what the hell he's talking about," I said, but I was really not paying Draco that much attention. I really just wanted to get out.

Draco said something extremely unflattering, and, after a second, nudged Crabbe into action.

It was a blessing that Crabbe and Goyle were so big, because I wasn't and neither was Draco, and the crowd threatened to swallow us both. The other two, however, were solid and big, even at their age. I followed placidly in their wake as the crowd thinned out and we made our way outside.

There, I hunched into my cloak. Good _god_. "Can you hurry up? The greenhouses _must_ be warmer than this." They had to be.

Draco rolled his eyes, pulled out his wand and swished it at me. " _Calefactorus_." With a soft buzzing feeling, my skin warmed from my ears to my toes. I frowned.

That... was a warming charm. I looked at Draco.

"What?" Draco asked defensively.

"Where did you learn that?"

"...from Mother? About three weeks go."

Oh my god.

Oh my _god_.

" _Ugh_ ," I said, unable to express my disgust, and threw my hands up. I turned and stormed toward the greenhouses.

"You're welcome!" called Draco as I left him behind. Goyle glanced between us and then, oddly, scrambled to catch up with me. His legs were longer and it wasn't long before he fell silently into step. He seemed pretty unlikely to leave me alone anytime soon, but at least he said nothing.

I rubbed my hands through my hair, scowling fiercely at nothing. It was _warm_. My fingers were _warm_ , deft and flexible. He'd even finessed the exact degree of heat, warming me without raising my body temperature to a fever. Nothing was stiff. Nothing was chilled. Nothing felt wrong.

If I'd tried that I'd have set my face on fire.

Why the hell was he so much better at it than I was?

"Arrgh," I growled aloud. Fucking _Draco_.

"Mm?" Goyle grunted.

"No," I said flatly. "Nothing." I took a deep breath, puffed out my cheeks and blew it out. It steamed in the air. Goddammit.

"Mm," he grunted, easy and accepting.

"Are you just going to follow me?"

"Yeah."

I sighed. Then, after a second, I patted his shoulder carefully. "At least you're quiet."

He didn't seem to be sure what to say to that, and, true to form, remained silent.

Herbology was a practical class shared with the Ravenclaws, and it did nothing to improve my mood.

The greenhouse itself was lovely. This was greenhouse one, the least dangerous of the ones here at Hogwarts. The space was huge, with a slanted glass roof that made the most of what sunlight could be gotten, and inside was row upon row of lush happy greenery, interspersed with wooden benches that were just the right height for young students. Greenhouse one was full of plants that actually looked pretty normal for the most part - many of them were actually common enough in muggle gardens, too, although supposedly muggles were unable to unlock their more magical effects.

Professor Sprout was a sweet-faced witch with frizzy greying hair and rosy cheeks. She was friendly, cheerful and comfortably overweight.

I ended up sharing a bench with Goyle because I'd stormed off on Draco and he was somewhere between perplexed and offended by my behaviour. I would have to apologise later.

Herbology was... a lot harder than it looked. I never was any good at gardening. Sprout was not pleased.

"What... what did I do wrong?" I asked her. She examined me like she was trying to tell if I was seriously asking. She must have given me the benefit of the doubt because she went back to looking at my stinging nettle with a very perplexed expression.

"I'm not entirely certain," she admitted slowly. "I'm going to ask you to write an extra eight inches on the topic of caring for plants in the _urtica_ genus - try not to think of it as a punishment, Miss Malfoy. I'd like it by Friday."

Yeah, it was totally a punishment. I nodded. "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to."

"I believe you. I've never seen a plant reduced to quite this consistency before," she confessed, sounding torn between fascination and concern. Uncertainly, she prodded it with her wand. No sign of life was forthcoming and the blackened muck didn't budge. It was almost... ossified. "...perhaps twelve inches, actually."

After an awkward silence, I apologised again.

Sprout cast one more baffled look at my work station, then patted me on the shoulder before she turned to Goyle, with whom I was sharing my bench. I saw her begin to gently note how Goyle had damaged a root while repotting. _Goyle_ was better at Herbology than I was. Christ.

I looked back at my workstation and its weird black mess.

Fuck.

Bugger.

 _Why_?

" _Scourgify_ ," I muttered, flicking my wand at it. I was a little gratified when the mess vanished, leaving only a slightly overscrubbed bench top behind. At least I could learn something. Then I pulled out _1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi_ to get started.

When lunch came, it was not a second too soon.

Sprout gave me one last pitying shake of her head before I left the damp warmth of the greenhouse. I felt dirty from working there, tired from learning new things, and sort of vaguely sick from the noise and socialisation. There was an ache behind my eyes and my joints were stiff with the cold.

Unfortunately, lunch was also a time when every other student became free and they all gathered in the Great Hall. It was loud and chaotic and when I came to the entryway the noise hit me like I'd walked into a wall. It was just children talking, laughing or arguing, nothing out of the ordinary. Gryffindor and Hufflepuff were the loudest, but it wasn't like Slytherin and Ravenclaw were quiet by any stretch of the imagination.

I stopped. Was I hungry? Well, yeah. Was I hungry enough to go in there? That was a much harder question. I hesitated.

There was a moment where Draco, Crabbe and Goyle were distracted by sneering at Harry and Ron where they were doing something at the Gryffindor table.

I turned and left, ducking out of sight as fast as possible.

I wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to go back to the Slytherin common room. I knew I'd heard people discussing free afternoons in the morning, and there was even one of those on my own schedule later in the week. It seemed like it would be crowded around this time of day.

I ducked walked down a corridor selected at random and ducked into an empty classroom. It was dusty enough that I was convinced it wasn't often used, so I felt no particular qualms about closing the door behind me and ducking down to sit on the floor. Anybody looking through the window of the door would have to be very tall indeed to see my head at this height.

I took a deep, dusty breath and exhaled slowly before tipping my head back until my skull tapped the wall. I closed my eyes. I could still hear the sounds of the Great Hall, distant but very present, and I was glad that I wasn't any closer. I could feel my pulse like a thumping pressure inside my skull.

I only had one more class for the day, at least. Then I could go... well, I'd probably go find the library, and hope that the novels were right about Pince being a vicious, wretched person with whom nobody wanted longterm contact. Being as I actually wanted the library for books and dead silence, that seemed ideal.

"One more class," I muttered sourly, pulling out my schedule to check. "Oh," I said.

I'd been right - there was only one more class today.

Unfortunately, it was Defence Against the Dark Arts with Professor Quirrell.

And _Voldemort_.

* * *

Was there something you particularly liked about this chapter? Let me know! Otherwise, catch you for the next update. : )


	10. Classwork

The real fear was this: Voldemort could read minds, I knew at least one version of the future of this world, and I thought he'd do a lot to learn about it. I did not want to live in a UK controlled by Voldemort, but much more than that, I didn't want to be any more than a boring (and preferably pureblood) blip on that man's radar. _Ever_.

The likelihood of him discovering that I knew of a future was exceedingly slim. I hadn't told anybody. The only person who could betray that information was me. I was anxious that I would do that despite myself.

I was completely paranoid that I'd give myself away somehow, that Quirrell would look at me and somehow just know that I was aware of the thing sharing his body. Even if I never made eye contact, somehow, inexplicably, one or the other of them would know. Why had I bothered reading about genealogies and goblins when I ought to have been researching whatever magical methods of perception existed?

I knew as soon as I thought about it that, should Voldemort figure it out and come for me? I would tell everything, tell it comprehensively, and tell it with as much detail as I could recall. I would tell him everything I knew, right down to the names of Harry Fucking Potter's future children - so it was really important to me, personally, that he never come knocking.

All of this occurred to me while I was sitting on the floor of one dusty unused classroom and trying to work up the motivation to attend class. So far my only good argument was that I'd look very strange avoiding just Quirrell's class...

I could hardly skip all of Quirrell's classes. What would I even say when somebody inevitably confronted me about it? 'Oh, sorry, Voldemort's stuck to the back of his head and I'm trying to avoid him a bit'? I did not think that would go down well. Even if I were to childishly invoke the 'my father will hear about this' that Draco seemed so fond of, there was a chance Lucius would be only too delighted to ingratiate himself with Voldemort anyway, which...

Honestly... Lucius and Narcissa, who despite my reservations seemed fairly reasonable most of the time, had actively chosen to follow Voldemort and that was baffling to me. It was baffling when they were all just characters on a page, but it was even stranger and more disturbing now that everything was so much realer.

Instead of heeding my well-developed flight instinct, I resolved to do nothing to draw attention to myself. I fell into step with Goyle on our way to the Defence classroom.

The Defence classroom wasn't actually that much like the history one. It was similar in that there were desks, although they were pushed to the sides of the room, and that at the front was a bench and a chalk board. There was a little more life to the room, though, with the weak sunlight streaming through slanted windows and a number of pictures, posters and learning aids scattered throughout. These I assumed were a mix of actual Ministry PSAs (including one advising people to keep their children indoors on full moons) and past students' projects.

One in particular that caught my eye was a mobile dangling from the ceiling: it spun in and endless loop showing the viewer three images on repeat: a man with pointed teeth, the same man bent over a prone body, and then the body getting up... only to become the man again in the first image. How... cheery.

"Cool," said Crabbe, nodding to a moving poster that showed a cartoon dementor cowering from a huge silvery dog. As I watched, the dog hunched and bared its teeth menacingly.

"I guess that's supposed to be a Patronus Charm?" I was caught up despite my nervousness. Even the cartoon depiction of the patronus was beautiful, all gleaming and bright. It was obvious why Crabbe had pointed to it - it drew the eye more than most of the other things in the room.

"R-right. P-patronus Charm, fascinating stuff."

A chill washed down my spine, prickling out to my extremities as my pulse kicked into high gear. Quirrell was right behind us. He must have approached from the other direction and come in directly after us.

I stilled.

"Only thing for d-dementors. Y-y-you'll not be learning that for m-many years, though."

I didn't say anything, because my mind was blaring nothing but pure panic and I couldn't seem to get there.

"Sorry, professor," said Draco, tugging me out of the way. I went numbly with the pull. "We didn't see you come in."

Quirrell looked... like a bit of a wreck, actually. If all this nervousness and stuttering was an act, it was an exceptionally good one. I'd never met somebody who could fake neurological symptoms like muscle ticks before. Quality acting.

I calmed a little as I looked at him. It was fine. He had no reason to suspect anything. I just had to avoid acting in any way suspect. Which would be... Well, I wasn't much of an actor. If I was well prepared I could lie with the best of them, but my poker face tended to fall apart when I was surprised or put on the spot.

On the other hand, I'd forgotten an important consideration: Quirrell had an entire class of children to pay attention to.

I quickly realised that he wouldn't be paying all that much attention to me - like most teachers, he'd reserve a lot of attention for the troublemakers.

I exhaled slowly. I'd be fine. Just as long as I didn't look suspect. Right

Quirrell peered out from beneath his huge garlicky turban, dark eyes darting here and there. At last he gave us a distinctly twitchy smile and mumbled something incomprehensible. Then, gesturing only vaguely, he sent us on our way to the desks, which were rearranging themselves so we could all sit to cover the day's lesson.

Even accounting for the disembodied Voldemort inside him, Quirrell seemed like a very strange man. I wondered if he'd been that way before his ill-fated journey abroad?

I spent the rest of that class torn between panic and boredom, which was exhausting. It wasn't that Quirrell was an outright awful teacher like Binns, just that he seemed to want to dedicate a lot of his class to laboriously addressing the theory.

Not even the interesting stuff, either. For the whole class period that day, we learnt that dark magic was "magic designed and used specifically to control or harm" and went over the theory of a spell we'd learn the following class - which was to be the charm for shooting harmless green sparks into the air.

For homework, we were asked to complete eight inches of writing on one use of green sparks and provide an example.

It was singularly uninspiring, as classes went - although it also seemed to be firmly within the grasp of Goyle, who seemed pleased to have been given homework he knew how to complete. Maybe this was the content and speed of learning that ensured that every student would be able to keep up, then. In which case... well. They could fall behind, thanks. I was bored.

That seemed surreal. I was in the same room as Lord Voldemort and I was _bored_.

Then the clock rang the hour again, and my first Defence class was over - and I'd survived sitting down in a classroom with the Dark Lord, and I had the homework assignment to prove it.

I got outside the classroom with Goyle tagging along behind like some kind of enormous, slightly belligerent puppy, and I paused there because - well. That was our last class for the day, wasn't it?

I felt simultaneously restless and enervated. If it hadn't been freezing and gross outside I might have gone to sit outside somewhere away from all the noise and people. But that wasn't likely to happen - and now Goyle was following much more closely, as though he thought I might try to give him the slip.

Which... yeah, I might. Probably.

I mean... seemed likely.

I glanced at him cautiously. I probably could. He wasn't that bright.

Draco appeared at my side only a moment later and, bookended by Crabbe and Goyle, we made it safely through the busiest part of the corridor.

"There're supposed to be club sign-ups in the common room," he reported.

"I have to find the library," I said firmly, by way of response.

"Merlin," muttered Draco.

"Do you want to come with me?" I asked Goyle, because it seemed the easiest way to cut Draco's inevitable protests short. I'd take one of his unwanted companions with me and then he'd just have to deal with Crabbe.

"Oh, do," Draco said, changing his tune immediately. "She'll get lost otherwise. You should see her around the manor."

The idea that Gregory Goyle might have a better sense of direction than I did was _not_ a welcome one. This was a kid who'd struggled to understand simple sentences in his own first language all day. I shot Draco a singularly venomous look.

"Or worse," he went on, meeting my expression with raised eyebrows of his own, "she'll get _distracted_."

Goyle shifted on his toes. "Well," he said.

I paused. To my knowledge, he hadn't actually expressed any kind of preference one way or another about anything Draco had asked of him.

"You don't have to," I said.

"Don't worry. Vincent will sign you up for the Gobstones Club," Draco said, elbowing Crabbe even as he rolled his eyes.

Goyle seemed to relax at that. Gobstones, huh? I hadn't imagined he'd be interested in something like that, but then I had to admit I hadn't really spent a lot of time contemplating Goyle's interests.

He looked to me and shrugged, so I had a very unexciting escort on my way to the library.

Despite my morning wanderings, I still hadn't actually figured out where the Hogwarts library was. That turned out to be easily solved, though - I just asked the first older student I saw with a blue and bronze tie.

"First years, right?" She said, tugging on a lock of brown hair. "It's in the west side on the first floor. Watch out for Madam Pince, though, she's mean." She gave Goyle an uncertain look, but didn't comment further.

The Hogwarts library was enormous. It was bigger than the Malfoys', even. There were tens of thousands of books all arranged in long rows along thousands of book shelves and cases, and around these huge muffling walls of leather and parchment were arranged small study tables of different sizes. There were three of the larger tables set nearby narrow windows, all of which were occupied by older students - fifteen and seventeen year olds, I thought, which stood to reason, given the exams they'd have to sit soon.

Irrationally, it annoyed me that the library wasn't completely empty. Despite that, it was very quiet. We were probably the youngest people there, and nobody seemed very inclined to talk to either of us.

The silence was less complete than in the Malfoy library where I would have been blissfully alone, since students did talk to each other - but they did it quietly. Everything was soft and quiet and hushed.

I felt marginally better just by showing up here.

Goyle looked sort of uneasy, but it wasn't like I was forcing him to be there with me. I hitched my bag up higher on my shoulder and wandered aimlessly, breathing the smell of old books and dust and peering at the titles as I walked past. The walkways between shelves were small and often labyrinthine. It was easy to become immersed in the atmosphere.

I knew there was a strong likelihood I'd get distracted and fail to actually do any of the work I'd been assigned if I left it, so while I was there I mentally tallied up what I was meant to be doing - some writing on caring for nettles for Sprout, some writing 'on goblins' for Binns, and something about spells for green sparks for Quirrell. It was all pretty straight forward, and when I'd finished thinking about how much homework I had, I realised that I was only talking about roughly the equivalent of three A4 pages of actual work.

Hmm.

The Hogwarts library didn't use the Dewey Decimal Classification any more than the Malfoy one did, but it was at least organised by author and topic, and there were separate sections where one could find broad topics of writing. There was an area dedicated to history, which seemed like a good start, and from there it wasn't hard to find the slender section about non-humans.

Despite being surrounded by books - any of which he could have picked up and read - Goyle followed me dully. He stopped when I stopped and walked when I walked. Really, it was a bit... disconcerting.

Internally I debated trying to shoo him away. Maybe I should just ignore him? I had no idea what to do with him.

He followed me to the study table I selected. We sat down.

He didn't have anything to do. I hesitated.

"We were meant to read a chapter for Herbology, right?" I said carefully. _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ had a surprisingly comprehensive glossary of the different things we'd be growing in Herbology classes (some of which we'd also be using in Potions, the text seemed to imply) but it also had some instructive chapters, which was technically the homework we'd been assigned - my assignment to write about how to take care of plants in the urtica genus was to be more like a punishment for killing mine so thoroughly.

Pointedly, I pulled out my own text book and slid it across the table to him. "Go on."

He hesitated. I wondered if he was trying to think of a way out of it, but honestly he had to do it some time. Eventually he cracked open the text book and I nodded and got back to my own work.

Binns' command to write something 'on goblins' wasn't very meaningful to me. What _about_ goblins?

Bewilderment turned into frustration quickly, and in the end I glowered in frustration at my page and my quill and decided, _fuck it,_ this was a class for eleven year olds, I didn't care that much.

I wrote the very basics I knew about goblins: simple statements about what they were, how they were classified as beings under the Ministry of Magic, that they were known for their metalsmithing - and how historically they'd come into conflict with wizards. It was probably a bit more than ten inches. Once I'd written it I looked in despair at my own handwriting and wrote it out all over again anyway, this time with fewer ugly splotches.

"Hey, Malfoy," said Goyle, and with a start I realised he meant me.

"Er, yes?"

"What's this say?"

I peered at the page, which was discussing stinging nettles more generally. "Trichomes."

He grunted and repeated it.

"They're the little stinging hairs on the plant," I offered.

He squinted. I peered at his face for a moment, trying to determine whether or not he was actually taking in any of what I'd said.

"What's the next part you're up to?" I prompted, trying to see what he was actually reading.

Haltingly, he read aloud, "Wizards in North A... Africa use a-"

He stopped.

I got shuffled my seat closer and eyed the text. I was sort of hoping the word he was having trouble with was in Latin or something, but that was evidently wishful thinking. It was 'preparation'.

I tried to think of what people had said to me when I'd been learning to read. "Sound it out," I suggested.

It took us about forty seconds together to make it from one end of the sentence to the other. In the end, what we got was: _Wizards in North Africa use a preparation of nettle leaves brewed in a tisane to treat internal disorders, including diseases of the kidneys and haemorrhage._

Even after he'd read the sentence, it was clear that Goyle wasn't actually absorbing very much of it. He could read and repeat it, but he didn't actually seem to extract the information from it in any meaningful way.

I eyed him tiredly.

I wasn't sure I really believed Crabbe and Goyle were as stupid as they seemed in the novels. It was just... very unlikely. It also seemed unlikely to me that a family as old, rich and inbred as the Goyles had missed signs of a more serious intellectual disability - their family tree was, like the Malfoys', less like a tree and more like a post. With all that inbreeding, surely they _had_ to be on the look out for disorders.

Goyle seemed... he hadn't had any problems with directions or remembering things that had happened recently. He followed instructions easily, even if they were presented in Draco's lackadaisical way, so he must have taken verbal information in, processed it and operated on it. So he wasn't _stupid,_ probably.

Which left... Ugh. Oh, who was I kidding? I had no idea why he was struggling so hard.

Maybe he just didn't learn well from written sources. Or maybe...

It occurred to me that, well, there was no _primary school_ in the Wizarding World. Maybe he just didn't have a lot of practice..?

I tapped my fingers on the table for a few long seconds, and when I looked back at Goyle he was still staring at his page, haltingly repeating the words.

I'd ask later. I felt very condescending, but there was so little comprehension in his stare that I couldn't even help myself.

"So this is talking about North Africa," I pointed out, shoving my finger between his face and the text to interrupt his gormless staring. "Do you know which countries those are?"

"Egypt," he said. That was frankly a relief, because even if he was missing six or seven other countries, at least he was in roughly the right place on the planet.

"...Close enough," I decided. We'd go with that for now. I wasn't talking about geography, I was talking about Herbology - which was a horrifying thought, because I was such a bad gardener it went beyond "not funny" and cycled right 'round until it became hilarious all over again. "So, over there in... um, Egypt, witches and wizards get the plants we were using in class today and they take the leaves off and use them for tea."

He nodded here. I was pleased to see that even if 'preparation of nettle leaves brewed in a tisane' was a bit beyond him, he certainly understood 'take the leaves off and use them for tea'.

"Where it says they use it to 'treat internal disorders', it means they use it to help people who are sick because things inside their bodies aren't working properly."

He looked at the writing again with his small, brutish eyes and mouthed the words while he read them. I wasn't sure what part of this he wasn't getting - it seemed more significant than just vocabulary, but it was also hard to tell where he was stalling.

"What's this?" he said finally.

"What does it sound like?"

The sound he came up with was something like _hay-more-huage._

"Haemorrhage," I said. To be fair, it wasn't an easy one to read.

Goyle repeated the word. It didn't sound quite right because he copied my pronunciation directly, which didn't match his dialect at all.

I waited to see if he knew what the word actually meant, but he didn't sound like he recognised it.

"It just means bleeding. If somebody is haemorrhaging, they're bleeding. It says 'internal disorders'," I added, pointing, "so it probably means internal bleeding."

He grunted.

I went back to my parchment. The History of Magic homework was more or less done, although it still seemed pretty silly to me. I turned to my copy of _The Dark Forces_ and began a summary of how our little green sparks spell could be used to attract attention and get help.

"Er," said Goyle.

I looked up. Sighed. "Sound it out." That was definitely something I remembered hearing as a child. And even if it wasn't, surely it sounded good. I could see myself repeating that a lot.

"Per-ren-yal," he said, after a few moments.

I leaned over. "Perennial," I agreed. "It's a... kind of plant that lives longer than others. Years." My understanding of gardening was really not that strong.

"'Stinging nettle is a perennial plant'," he read in that same careful and halting way. "So you plant it and it lasts years?"

"Right," I agreed.

He nodded, like this made sense to him, and we subsided into silence. _Thank god_.

I got the homework for Defence done, read through the - frankly boring - chapter on nettles for Herbology and scribbled out twelve inches n the topic of 'how not to kill plants in the urtica genus'. It wasn't rocket science, but I certainly didn't put a lot of effort into it, either.

During this time, Goyle interrupted me six separate times.

On the one hand, he was trying my patience in a seriously epic way.

On the other hand, he was somehow still making an effort to get his work done despite being so incredibly, improbably poor at it. Goyle was... a bit stupid, yes, and he needed a lot of things explained to him and a lot of help - a _lot_ of help, actually - with reading longer or more complex words.

I felt awkwardly like now I'd begun I couldn't possibly stop. Maybe offering help had been a mistake? But he was still trying, and any time he looked like giving up a few encouraging noises kept him going, so... I kept on with him.

I couldn't really devote much of my attention to reading for entertainment, which is what I'd intended to do when I sought out the library - finish my homework quickly and find some interesting books about magic or history. It was a lot more draining than I'd intended the afternoon to be, although curiously satisfying when we finally finished Herbology and History and moved on to Defence. This, at least, Goyle was pretty well-equipped to handle, since all he had to do was find a use for a spell that shot green sparks and to write down something about it - all of this was in the chapter in the text book, which was blessedly straightforward.

A clock buried somewhere in the library chimed the quarter hour again, and that was when I realised that it was after six o'clock.

I paused, frowning. "Hey," I said slowly. "Aren't you hungry?"

Goyle grunted an affirmative.

"Well, finish up, let's get dinner."

He looked at his page, then started measuring two fingertips to an inch. He scowled when he discovered he had more like six inches than eight.

"Write bigger," I suggested.

I wasn't really serious, but he seemed to take this to heart, and his script took a marked turn for the huge. Well, whatever. I'd tried, and now I was done with trying.

We left under the wary eye of a thin, dark-haired witch in an elaborate hat who I assumed to be Madam Pince, and when we got to the Great Hall it was already going on six thirty and the huge room was packed with rowdy students.

I peered through the double-doors and toward the Slytherin table, which was no quieter than the others.

It was really full.

I was sort of hungry. I'd skipped lunch and not eaten much breakfast.

But it was _really_ full.

I... really did not want to go in there. Honestly, I'd done a lot of things I didn't want to do recently. For Christ's sake I was at _school_ again. Not even university! _Primary school_. Did I have to do this, too?

I could see a flash of pale blond hair and knew Draco would be in there somewhere. Was that good or bad? I supposed it was better than that one little shit from breakfast. What was his name again? Some kind of bird, if I remembered correctly. Kestrel? No... it started with a P. ... _Penguin_? Surely not.

I could get up early and make it to breakfast at six again, and eat properly there. There were so many fewer students then - and the Quidditch team couldn't practice every single morning, surely. I licked my lips.

I looked sideways at Goyle, who was waiting patiently right next to me - as he'd been doing for most of the day.

"So... If I just, like, get a bread roll and leave," I said slowly, still hesitating outside the doors, "are you going to follow me?"

"...yeah," said Goyle, in a tone of abject despair.

"You don't have to."

Goyle just looked at me. Patiently. Like I was the stupid one. I was not, for the record, the stupid one, as evidenced by how I'd just painstakingly held his hand through all of his homework.

I scowled. "You _don't,_ " I reiterated. "Believe it or not, I'm perfectly happy on my own." Perfectly happy may have been something of an understatement, honestly.

"It's not that." He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

No doubt his parents had told him he had to stick with one or both of the Malfoy kids, but he sure wasn't speaking up about it. "You could stay with Draco," I pointed out in a voice that was as gentle as I still had the patience for. (So, not very gentle, no.)

"Draco said to stay with you."

"He did say that, didn't he." Bugger. I raised my eyes to the ceiling. "Okay."

The Great Hall was obviously noisy when I approached, but actually stepping through the doors was like being hit with a wall of sound. Mostly it sounded like children screaming bloody murder, but I supposed if I paid more attention to the actual noises in the cacophony I'd begin to pick out individual voices.

I deposited us at the Slytherin table next to Draco, who looked up, made a noise in his throat, and returned his attention to his dinner. It wasn't a feast like at the beginning of the year, but that didn't mean Hogwarts ate badly. Tonight was roast lamb and vegetables, and it looked perfect and smelled lovely - although the character of the mint sauce was a little suspect.

I saw the bread rolls and immediately brightened. "Is that -"

"You are so strange," muttered Draco, but he still passed the rolls without even being prompted.

I took two, and chose not to explain myself at all. They were boring white ones, true, but the novelty still hadn't worn off. I was pretty sure I could eat my bodyweight in bread and still get excited about _more bread_ the next day.

On Draco's other side, Crabbe had glowered Tracy Davis into leaving her seat - which she did with bad grace - and Goyle was now settled next to him, digging into a plate piled high with potatoes.

I eyed the food then decided that I should probably eat some vegetables. The parsnips and carrots had the most nutritional value, probably, so I took a couple before I ate my pile of bread. The carrots were all right, roasted a toasty orange and wrinkling at the edges. They tasted sweet, too, like the roasting had brought all the sugars out in force.

But... there was something compelling about just the taste of _bread_. It was like the wheat was _calling to me_.

"Are... you all right?"

I looked across the table and found Davis was now sitting across from me. She was eating with her elbows on the table, and gestured at me with her fork when she spoke. From the expression on his face, Draco took a very dim view of Davis's table manners.

Personally, I didn't think delicate table manners were really necessary for an eleven year old eating dinner at boarding school, and frankly it was only my time at the Malfoys' over summer that even made me notice. Draco's deportment was miles better than mine in general, really, even though he was an eleven year old kid. It was like he didn't even have to think about it. It was second nature.

"Er... I'm fine," I said, and tried to savour my bread a little less obviously.

"Right," she said, looking dubious. She shoved her hair out of her eyes with one hand and went back to her dinner.

Draco ignored both of us loftily.

Two seats away, I could hear the rumble of Goyle's voice around a mouthful of lamb. It seemed as though he'd been signed up for the Gobstones Club as per his preference, so that was... exciting for him, I supposed. As far as I knew, it was a stinkier, messier version of marbles; it didn't seem all that thrilling to me.

"She made me do _all_ my homework," he was saying to Crabbe, like he didn't think I could hear him or something.

Crabbe, when I snuck a glance past Draco, looked horrified. "All of it?"

" _All of it_."

"...I just made one of the Ravenclaws give me theirs," Crabbe admitted.

I frowned. The Ravenclaw firsties weren't even in our classes. They couldn't possibly have had the same homework set - they hadn't had the same _subjects_ taught.

Well. That was... weird.

"Did you really?" Draco asked incredulously.

"Really what?"

He gave me a narrow-eyed, unimpressed look. "Make him do all his homework."

"Oh, that. Yes." I paused. "He seemed to need a bit of help with some of it." By which I meant a lot of help with most of it.

"You mean a lot of help with all of it," Draco corrected with a sniff.

It was so close to my own thought that I looked at him, a little worried. Oh god, maybe I was a Malfoy after all. "Well," I hedged.

"Right." Draco rolled his eyes. Then he paused and narrowed them instead. "Hang on. Have you done all of the homework for our classes today already?"

I wondered if this was a prelude to asking to copy it, and I diligently applied myself to my bread instead of answering.

" _Victoria_ ," he said, in a lower voice.

"Yes, all right," I muttered.

"It's not due for two days."

"And now it's done and I don't have it hanging over my head," I said, as though it was that simple.

Quite contrary to how I presented myself to Draco, though, I'd only learnt the value of staying on top of assigned work when I went to university. One comparative literature course in my second year had required a total of forty-eight primary readings of various novels and short stories over the course of ten weeks - a count which hadn't even included criticism or commentary. It had been a sink-or-swim moment for my organisational skills, and unsurprisingly one of the classes in which I got my lowest marks. The lesson stuck.

Draco gave me a dubious look. "What difference does that make? You're going to spend all of your time in the library anyway."

"Yes." Why bother to deny it? It was quiet and had almost no students this early in the year. "But now I can read what I want without thinking about the work due."

He made the kind of derisive noise for which either of his parents would have scolded him and returned to his dinner.

Speaking of Lucius and Narcissa...

There was still that letter sandwiched between the pages of _1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi_ in my book bag. I'd have to make time to finish it and take it up to the owlery.

I had a vague idea of where to find the owlery, and given that it was a large stone tower full of owls it probably wouldn't be that hard to find. Curfew wasn't for a while yet, either, so I probably had time to finish writing and run a letter up there.

"Draco." He looked up. "I'll probably send a letter back to Narcissa this evening. Would you mind me borrowing your owl?"

"No. I've got one to send to father, so you can take both of them."

Well, that figured. A lot of the castle was a long way from the dungeons. I nodded.

I glanced at the ceiling of the Great Hall, which was already dark above us with a smattering of stars showing here and there. It was barely autumn, so heaven only knew how dark and cold it'd be come winter.

Hmm.

When we returned to the dungeons, I picked a corner of our gothic-chic common room and fished out my letter to finish it off. My corner was cold, but so was the rest of the castle - and the fireside was taken up by a group of fourth years, one of whom I recognised as part of the Quidditch team I'd met that morning - Higgs, I thought.

The dormitory might have been a better choice for letter writing. It would have been quieter, because I could spot most of the girls from my dorm right here. Unfortunately Draco wouldn't be able to find me in the dormitory. The common room was... loud. Crowded. The novels never mentioned how many people had to fit in this space. It was large, but there had to have been fifty or so people there. It was really unavoidably noisy.

There were almost no seventh years that I could see - all of the ones I'd noticed around seemed to be varying levels of stressed, and I wondered if NEWTs were really that bad. Maybe they were.

The letter contained almost nothing exciting, really - I included comments on the paintings and tapestries, getting up early enough to see the Quidditch team get soaked with icy lake water, a series of increasingly blotted question marks and alarmed exclamation points about the state of Binns' history class...

 _I also have the dubious distinction of having murdered my nettle in a way Professor Sprout said she'd never seen before_. _It turned into something black and ossified and I took the top layer of wood off the bench getting it off. Hopefully that won't happen every lesson._

Overhead, a mint-green piece of parchment went flying, shaped into a neat paper crane. It hit the wall, dissolved in a splash of colour and stained the stones a shimmery green. Over by the fire, somebody yelped as their cards went off and made everything smell of singed hair. Exploding snap wasn't a quiet game.

I looked up then and felt abruptly overwhelmed by the light and colour and noise and the relentless sounds of talking people. I quickly lowered my eyes and kept writing, determined not to think about it. It was hard to concentrate, but once I did I could almost ignore the other people.

By the time I got through my rambling dissertation on why "on goblins" was a hilariously inappropriate topic to set for homework Draco was standing over me, tapping his foot meaningfully.

"Are you done?"

"Nearly," I promised, applying myself quickly to the final sentence.

I'd had some difficulty picking a way to sign off the letter. _Love_ was inaccurate. _Sincerely_ was cold, and both _thank you_ and _kind regards_ were right out. _Yours_ was sort of disturbing to think about.

 _Your daughter_ , I wrote finally, and scrawled _Victoria_ at the bottom. It'd have to do.

I blew on my ink. "Hang on, it has to dry."

"Oh, honestly," sighed Draco, and prodded me aside to cast some kind of fine sand on the page. "Don't be dim, Victoria."

Ohh. Was that what that was for? That made a lot of sense. I could see some of the fine grains darken as they absorbed excess ink. In about five seconds, it seemed completely dry. I was dead certain there was a charm for that, but obviously neither of us knew it. "Huh. Thanks."

"If you want to be back before curfew," he prompted, shoving his letter at me.

"Yeah, okay." I got up and took his letter with my own.

He narrowed his eyes. "You're not going to read it," he said flatly.

I blinked. "...Why would I?"

"Why _wouldn't_ you?"

 _Because I don't care,_ I thought, and closed my mouth on the comment. "I won't have time, like you said," I said instead. I felt very diplomatic.

"Fine," he sniffed, sidling past to usurp the chair I'd been using. Thanks, Draco. "Go." And then he waved imperiously.

Goyle got up to follow me. I gestured at him to stay where he was.

"You don't need to come," I said firmly. He looked back at Draco like he was checking for permission, which was the point at which I rolled my eyes and quietly left without him. Honestly.

Of course, finding the owlery was less straightforward than I'd thought. I asked a couple of portraits for directions. One of them, an elderly nun, gave me a very unimpressed look and turned away to attend to her book. Another was a man all in chain armour who spoke only French, and not a very modern French at that. Hmm.

I finally got lucky with an eighteenth century witch trying to get ink out of her robes, who gave me brusque directions.

"I've heard spirits are good for getting ink out," I told her hesitantly after I'd thanked her. That would depend on the nature of the ink, obviously, but it was certainly the thing for modern inks on white shirts.

"Oh, there's no real use," she grouched. "It's _painted in_."

"...Oh." Well. I supposed that made sense, although it was sort of unfair to her to be painted in that kind of scene then. "Sorry."

"It's the fault of the artist. Not to worry, dove, my brother poisoned him." She grinned, showing me very yellowed teeth. "Run along now, it's almost curfew."

So run along I did. It was, as I expected, somehow even colder outside than it was in the draughty castle. It occurred to me that at some point during December or January we were practically guaranteed snow here. I felt a little ill just thinking about it.

Hopefully by then I would be able to cast that simple, straightforward warming charm that Draco was clearly already proficient at.

...increasingly, I wondered if there was going to be _any_ kind of magic I was good at on the first try. Frankly, I felt like curses and jinxes didn't really count - they weren't what you'd call _useful_ skills. Honestly all I wanted from my life was warm toes and a lifetime supply of bread.

The owlery was, as advertised, filled with owls: all feathery and gleaming eyes and soft hooting cries, more lively now than it would have been during the day. There were a couple of exotic owls that obviously weren't school ones, including a single snowy owl. She was just as pretty as I'd expected.

I found Draco's huge eagle owl - he was one of the bigger ones, with ear tufts that made it look like he was scowling at me and gleaming orange eyes - and gingerly coaxed him into accepting our letters.

This wasn't to say that he needed coaxing, really, only that I had a healthy wariness for his talons and beak. He stood very still for me with his wings tucked carefully away, and didn't so much as twitch while I tied the parchment to his leg.

"Take these back to the Manor, all right?" I asked. He made a low noise and swiftly took wing. I watched until I could no longer see him in the dark - which wasn't long, since my eyesight was imperfect and the clouds were heavy.

Well. That was that sent.

Email was still more convenient.

There was probably some equivalent of an email, actually. No doubt there was a way to make linked books or pieces of parchment show the same thing over a distance. But owls, it seemed, were preferred.

I wasn't entirely sure why. As I was reflecting on this, a big barn owl swooped silently through the open side of the room with a fat rat dangling from its talons. The bones made a singularly gross noise as it snapped them in its heavy beak.

...Yeah, wizards were so fucking weird.

I made my way carefully back to the ground and pulled my cloak tightly around myself. Without the sheltering shape of the owlery there wasn't a lot of protection from the wind until I came beneath the protective shadow of the castle proper.

I made it to the steps outside the entrance hall. That was where I ran into trouble.

At the top of the steps I looked up from my feet and saw two identical redheads.

They were honestly identical, without the differences of grooming or obvious body language that most twins I'd met had - if they had differences, they were very subtle, and from the way they mirrored each other I sort of wondered if they played it up on purpose. They were more compact than Percy had been, but they had the same reddish hair and freckled skin. The resemblance was obvious.

Abruptly I wondered if maybe taking Goyle with me might have been a better idea after all. Not that he could _do_ anything, but a human shield wouldn't have gone amiss.

I was pretty sure that the Weasley twins were bad news. The worst kind of news, actually, given what I knew about our respective families. I was a Slytherin, too.

"Bit late for a firstie to be running around, isn't it?" one of the twins asked.

I could feel my pulse start jumping away.

I licked my teeth. "Ah... well, I don't think it's past curfew yet," I said cautiously, stepping around one of them to get back into the castle. Indoors wasn't warm, but there wasn't a chilly night wind, either.

"Accent," said the other twin, nodding thoughtfully.

They shared a look.

With two of them working in concert, it was easy for them to box me in - and then one of them slung an arm over my shoulders, all companionable and friendly-like.

 _Shit. Here's trouble,_ I thought, going still in the middle of the entrance hall. At this time of night, it was deserted - most of the castle had retreated to their common rooms after dinner. There weren't many club meetings this early in the term either. It wasn't likely there'd be help from anyone just stumbling upon us.

I eyed the possible exits, but it didn't seem likely I'd make it to one of them.

The arm slung over my shoulders gave me a squeeze, which made my skin crawl.

"So, your twin brother -"

"Marvellous thing, twins."

"Quite right."

"-Draco, wasn't it?"

"...yes," I said slowly, peering at them. It was like watching a tennis match in fast motion. It wasn't that they actually finished each other's sentences - they just interjected their own conversation between the sentences that were actually directed at me.

Obviously they didn't know Draco and I weren't twins, which made sense given that we were in the same year and were therefore presumably the same age. No point correcting them.

"Well. He's a bit of a prat, Miss Malfoy," said one. And now he was twirling his wand absently between his fingers.

That wasn't a subtle threat. I eyed them, but the problem with the twins was immediately obvious: there were two of them. Even if I could whip out my wand and hex one of them - and I was certain I could, although how effective that hex would be was uncertain - I wasn't likely to get the other one. It would end badly for me, so I may as well see what they wanted to talk about.

Draco, apparently.

Lord, what had he said to Ron? I hadn't been there, and I couldn't actually remember.

Yeah, this wasn't going anywhere good. I wasn't sure if I should be terrified or pissed off, and it was hard to concentrate. Their weird back-and-forth speech wasn't helping.

"Mighty rude to _our_ baby brother," said the other.

I decided, after a slow breath, that this wasn't as serious - probably - as my heightened anxiety really suggested. They were upset about some stupid thing Draco had said, no doubt, but I couldn't see why they'd hurt _me_ for it.

So I ignored the twin fiddling with his wand for now and instead peeled the other's fingers off my shoulder. I gave his hand back to him probably a bit more firmly than necessary. "Look, I'm right here, you don't need to _touch_ me."

Red eyebrows rose. In concert. They were... synchronised in a lot of their movements, and there was a lot of nonverbal conversation going on, most of which I probably didn't even notice. Fucking creepy, that.

Once I stepped away they came together again. My back was to a wall and they could easily block the exits, but for now I was just pleased neither was touching me.

"Touchy, touchy," murmured one to the other.

"Very touchy, thank you. I don't think it's asking a lot for you to keep your hands to yourself, even if you did pull me aside to whine about Draco."

"It's not whining," said one of them, wide-eyed. "It's _suggesting_."

"Advising," the other prompted, crossing his arms.

"Recommending, maybe."

"Mate," I sighed. "Listen -" and here I ignored the way one of them raised his eyebrow at the other and mouthed 'accent'. Rude. "If you're going to ask me to intercede, you have a very inflated idea of how much control I have over Draco. I mean, how much control do you have over your brothers?"

They looked at each other. "Well," said one of them, and the other grinned. "Depends which brothers."

 _Riiight._

I did not roll my eyes but it was a near thing. "Well, I assure you I have very little control over my brother. You'd be better off discussing it with a teacher or writing to my mother, if it's really bothering you." Hopefully Narcissa had a modicum of public decorum, unlike Lucius, whose brain seemed to leak out his fucking ears when confronted with a Weasley. "Can I go now? Only, as you mentioned, it's kind of late. I'm not sure how close to curfew it actually is."

There was a glance shared. "Twitchy little rule-minder, isn't she?"

" _Tell a teacher_ , honestly," scoffed one.

"But it's _close to curfew_ , George," mocked the other.

Oh, for fuck's sake. I was never going to win this one. If I told them I couldn't bloody help them and to kindly piss off they'd probably hex me, but I'd probably end up in detention if I allowed them to wallow in this absurd fraternal performance art because it was, in fact, _quite close to curfew_.

"What do you _want_?" I said through my teeth.

"Well, if you can't help," said one cheerfully - George, assuming the other one who'd called him George wasn't just being confusing for the sake of it - "you can always take a message."

I did not like the sound of that. If I'd been thinking clearly, I'd have gone for my wand, but I wasn't thinking clearly; I was panicked.

He raised his wand.

I flinched.

" _Colovaria._ "

I twitched. It didn't - It didn't _hurt_ , but -

Fred laughed. "Merlin, the look on your _face_ , you'd think we were going to murder you."

It took me a second to translate. That was - oh. That was just a colour change charm.

My heart did not slow.

I blinked. Looked at my hands. My robes. Finally I tugged on my hair. Instead of the very dark brown it usually was, it gleamed red and gold and striped like a candy cane.

Oh.

Well, that wasn't that bad.

"Well, how would I know?" I wondered.

My heart still wasn't slowing, but now my hands were shaking. I curled them into fists and kept them close to my sides. The movement was mostly hidden by the robes, I thought.

To be honest, all of the spells _I_ knew that might help to deal with this kind of situation were a bit mean. Most of the hexes Lucius taught me were simple but very... effective. And comparatively mean.

"I don't know how they do it in Australia, but we don't make a habit of actually murdering firsties here," said George.

"Lovely Gryffindor colours, though, Malfoy," said Fred, as though I might not have noticed. "They look rather well on you."

I knew for a fact that gold looked pretty sickly on me, actually, and I gave Fred an unimpressed look.

The amusement fell away from his face. "Run along and tell your brother to stop being a prat."

I scowled fiercely. I didn't mind elderly witches in portraits telling me to _run along_ , but a couple of thirteen year olds was... well, that pissed me off.

"Wouldn't want to be caught out after curfew," said George cheerfully.

"Certainly not. Imagine the scandal."

"Indignity."

" _Humiliation_."

I ground my teeth, but there was no point staying to argue, and I really _didn't_ want to end up staying out after curfew on my very first night. I sidestepped Fred and headed off down the corridor off entrance hall, in the opposite direction to the one they'd need to take.

I could still hear them talking, though. They loved the sounds of their own voices. "What ever has become of the standards around this place. First years, out of bed and roaming the halls after curfew -"

"We could tell Perce. I mean. I'm not sure, but I think I remember hearing -"

"He's a prefect? _No._ " A gasp. "He couldn't be- why, I'm sure he'd have _told_ us-"

Mercifully, their voices faded as I rounded a corner.

I tugged on my hair, annoyed. I wasn't sure how to fix it. Stupid kids. I was sure somebody in the Slytherin common room would know how to reverse a colour change charm anyway. There was almost certainly a prefect I could ask. Or maybe Flint, he seemed nice enough for a strange man I'd just met, and I knew he'd been sprawled like a big cat next to the fire when I left.

But even if everybody refused, it wasn't like it was _actually_ harmful... It was just hair, after all. Even if they'd scared the shit out of me at the time, I could see how I'd find it amusing later. They could have done a lot worse.

This opinion, I discovered when I let myself back in, was _not_ one shared by Slytherin house.

* * *

Notes!

1\. Victoria is an appalling teacher but the educational standards in the Wizarding World are not high. Shrug.

2\. Goyle is going to be so :C that she got charmed against her will the second he wasn't following her around. Goyle is the gift that keeps giving. (Even when you'd rather he stopped.)


End file.
